


Mischief

by Redlux



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Friends to Lovers, Hale-McCall Pack, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, Kidnapped Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Mischief, Misunderstandings, Pack Bonding, Plot, Post-Season/Series 03, Protective Derek, Protective Pack, Protective Scott, Scent Kink, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Scott is a Good Friend, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Tortured Stiles Stilinski, Violence, so much blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2020-10-10 18:56:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20532941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redlux/pseuds/Redlux
Summary: Stiles is kidnapped and tortured by a demon, but it doesn't want information. It's playing a different game.





	1. I Will Not Follow

**Author's Note:**

> Any feedback is always appreciated - I know I've got a lot to learn!  
Not beta read, so I'm sorry if there's mistakes that slipped through.  
I'm quite a cheery person, I promise!

_Mischief! Mischief!_

It was a voice he thought he’d forgotten. He’d thought about that voice, distracting him mid-sentence from his essays, from the breakfast dishes after dad had left for work, from some joke Scott was making at his expense. In those moments he always asked himself how could he have forgotten something so important, so beautiful?

_Mischief!_

The beautiful voice was calling from the glow. How had he ended up in this room…or rather…space? Something must be on fire; there is a dull flickering redness in the air. But then, why was it so cold?

_Mischief! Mischief!_

What is he doing? Floating about, asking himself questions, ignoring the fact that he is being called. He tries to call back. He’ll rasp if he has to. But something is blocking his throat. It’s as if something fat and barbed is stuck there. All he feels is pain, a swelling redness all over his body.

_Mischief!_

He chokes again in an attempt to call back, but he can’t stay silent, can’t ignore her, so he screams the words in his head. He’s surprised when the sound echoes through the dullness.

_Mum! Where are you?! I’m scared._

_I’m here, Mischief. I never left._

It is too real, the sound of the voice. He just cracks like an egg and the sobs pour out. He’ll be hysterical soon.

_Mischief, I never left. I’m here. You’re so brave. You’ve always been so brave, my little Mischief._

He doesn’t feel brave as he weeps. But his mum was always right.

_I don’t feel brave, mum._

_Braver than Batman!_

His sobbing bubbles into a rueful, tear-filled laugh. _I’m Batman. Scott can be Robin._

_You’re smart too, Mischief. Always getting into trouble._

He nods, weeping again. _Sure do. Caught up with me now, though._ He raises his head, looks for mum, but he cannot see anything. He wants to get up, find her, let her hold him. He wants to tell her he still has the jeep, that it broke down last week, but then he got it fixed. He wants to let her stroke his hair like she did when she could still talk, when she could still remember…

_Smart and brave, Mischief. You need to wake up. You need to be you._

Her voice is receding, becoming quieter, more distant. The panic shoots through him. _No, don’t go! Don’t leave me! Mum? Mum!_ He tries to find her. He’s not sure there’s such a thing as space anymore, but he tries to move through it, to follow her.

_No, mischief. She is almost gone. I follow you. I…follow…you._

He doesn’t care. He’ll catch up to her, wherever she goes. It’s better to follow her than to go back. He can’t go back.

_No!_

She’s by his ear, close to his face, but he can’t see her. She’s screaming desperately.

_No, you can’t follow! I follow you! I’ll always follow you!_

Then he’s pushed, and he didn’t know that all this time he’s been standing on some ledge, because as soon as he loses balance he’s falling. Falling, and as he falls, the air sinks darker, colder. Then the ground—

* * *

—kicks him hard in the chest. There’s cracking noises and he would scream if the air hadn’t been forced from him. Some blood comes up the back of his throat, oozing, like he’s a fucking ketchup bottle. He concentrates on trying to breath and ignore the stabbing agony that comes whenever he moves.

In.

Out.

There’s noise, music even. It’s crackling and jovial and playing from a gramophone on the other side of the basement. His eyes roll over and the room and the room rolls too. His sight pulls apart and squashes back together, like putty. It’s rather like being drunk.

‘Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me…my lover stands on golden sands…and watches the ships that go sailing…’

There’s another voice. It doesn’t sound beautiful. It’s a voice he wished he could forget. He doesn’t hear what it’s saying, but it carries on. Then it whistles to the music.

Stiles tries to orientate himself. He’s got the breathing nailed, mostly, but it’s hard to remember, to know, where the hell he is and why he’s here.

The sound of a knife being sharpened brings everything back.

Algernon is opening the fridge, bringing out an apple. The music has changed, but it’s equally jolly and sickening. The demon is coming back and Stiles is crawling as best he can into a corner. The demon sits opposite him, crosses his legs and carving the apple with the knife…the same knife…

‘Would you like a piece?’ He asks, offering Stiles a slice. Stiles feels he’s going to be sick. He’s starving, but he won’t take what’s being offered. He wonders how something so evil can look so normal, so undisturbed. Algernon could have served him coffee at Starbucks, could’ve rented him a library book or given him a filling. When he watches the demon eating the slice of apple, it looks like a student in Beacon Hills High School cafeteria. He can’t help counting the pieces of fruit and watch them disappear, one by one. There’s a rising sense of dread and horror as their number dwindles, until at the last piece, Algernon brings out hand and Stiles flinches.

‘Come on now, it’s the last piece and I don’t want you thinking I didn’t offer to share.’

Stiles is shaking, his head is moving involuntarily, jarringly, from side to side. Algernon pops the last piece into his mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ the demon says gently, gesticulating to the basement, the bars of what used to be a kennel, the dried pools of blood on the floor. ‘I just don’t know anything else. If I did,’ he smiles, and it’s a kind, warm smile, ‘I’d leave you well alone.’

That night, Stiles screams to the tune of _La Vie en Rose_.

* * *

‘You know what? I’m surprised nobody’s come for you yet. Stiles, look.’ Algernon pulls his face with the hand holding the bloody knife. The demon is on his haunches and in his other hand is a phone. Stile’s phone. ‘It’s Saturday evening and you’ve been gone since Friday afternoon, but look: no missed calls and only two texts. I thought, you know, somebody would miss you.’ Algernon changes suddenly and Stiles flinches again, tries to squeeze away even though there’s nowhere to go. ‘I’m sorry. That was very rude of me.’ The ostensible sincerity terrifies him. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I texted Scott saying you were working on that literature essay. You know, the one about Huckleberry Finn?’ The demon makes a warm laugh and intones, ‘of course, _he_ hasn’t started it yet. And your dad,’ he takes on an exaggerated authoritative voice, ‘_the sheriff_, thinks you’re staying at Scott’s, so you see, there’s nothing to worry about.’

The trouble, Stiles is thinking, of waiting to be rescued is that he’s too impatient.

It is his last coherent thought that evening.

* * *

The music has stopped, and Algernon is washing his bloody hands in the washbasin. Stiles has come to terms with death. It doesn’t seem so bad now. Death is, he hopes, an inanimate state. Tables are inanimate. When you carve something into them, they can’t howl with pain.

* * *

‘Hey, Mr Stilinski, time for a ride.’

He’s watching his feet drag against the floor. He’s like a paintbrush, leaving a long streak of red across the basement floor. His head feels heavy, a bowling ball, dragging his neck this way and that.

He’s being carried up a flight of stairs. He’s not the lightest guy, Algernon must be stronger than he looks. Demons are quite strong though…

It would make him laugh, if he could wave goodbye to the gramophone, but it feels as if his arms are being pulled so he doesn’t bother.

* * *

‘Here we are. Sorry that it’s ending, I feel we really bonded.’

Algernon’s voice wakes him. He’s in the passenger seat of a truck and it’s still dark, but he can still make out the leaves and trunks. It could be anywhere outside Beacon Hills. When the door opens, he almost falls out, but the demon carries him carefully to the floor, lays him down amongst the autumnal debris and mud.

‘Pay attention now, this bit’s important.’ He’s on his haunches again, phone in hand. ‘Remember what I told you, on Friday. I know you won’t forget, I know you don’t want to believe me, but I thought you should know; it’s only fair. And remember, the choice is always yours.’

He’s been cut all over his body. He’s pretty sure he’s missing some bits, that he’s not entirely a whole person anymore. There’s a stinging, mind-controlling agony that takes over all other thoughts when the skin is initially unzipped. Then after the cut’s been made, that dull throbbing, biting, stinging: it isn’t nearly so bad. The pain dims a little with adrenaline. It hurts now, but it will go away.

But those words, said to him now…the words, said to him before the whole nightmare started…they are a different kind of torture. The pain…it’s not something he will ever be able to explain or come to terms with. It’s worse than dropping an anvil through his stomach because it endures, because there is no hope of recovery. That feeling of pure despair.

Algernon’s eyes widen and he drops Stile’s phone. He takes deep breaths. Inhaling, feasting. Days of torture, but this will be the meal that sates him. When he’s had his fill, he picks the phone back up, unlocks it with the code that cost Stiles a fingernail, and sweeps through it. ‘Okay Snow White, time for your rescue. I hope you don’t mind, but it’s not Prince Charming on this occasion. Prince Charming can’t always be relied upon. _The Sheriff_ however…’ He puts the phone on speaker and drops it by Stiles’ head. Its ringing as the truck engine rumbles. It keeps ringing, and God, what if he doesn’t pick up? There isn’t strength enough to move. He can’t even…he just wants…sleep.

‘Stiles? Stiles are you okay? It’s four in the morning!’

Oh God, he loves that voice so much.

When he tries to reply, his words are drowned out by the truck. It goes up a gear, the wheels spin a little in the mud, then it’s gone.

_Stiles._

_Stiles._

He must have fallen asleep, because he has a thing for hearing his parents when he’s passed out. No…it’s not his mother’s voice…

‘Stiles, son, you’re scaring me, can you just answer me.’

‘Da…’

‘Stiles?! Are you okay? Where are you?’

‘Help…me…follow…’

_No! I follow you Mischief! I will always follow you!_


	2. I Will Do Anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding continuity, I'm just gonna cross the Rubicon and say just after season 3. If there are errors please flag and I'll try my best not to get tangled up.

'What is it, exactly, that you want to gain from this, Scott?' Deaton draws his fingers across the horned figure of his pendant. 'Because as I've already explained, you won't bring her back. It can't, and shouldn't, be done.'

'But I could speak to her? I could hear her voice again? One last time?'

'You think that would help you?' Deaton realises he's speaking too sternly. 'Scott...you're a mess. You look like you haven't slept this week, like you've been out every night. Take a bath, some candles and bubbles. Visit the park. Get some rest, read a book - a different book, one by Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams. This book...this will only make you worse, and it's dangerous.'

There's a black-bound grimoire opened on the table between them, and it's turned to a page covered in runes and illustrations and line after line of handwritten text on how to summon the voices of the dead. Scott has noticed Deaton's wariness around it; he hasn't touched it once. 'Where did you even find it?'

'Online.' Deaton's eyebrows rise. 'You bought a written doorway to the voices of the dead...on Amazon?'

Scott manages to look sheepish. 'It was ten dollars cheaper and came with free delivery.'

'This isn't funny, Scott.'

He knows it. There was absolutely nothing funny since Allison died; everything funny had drained away, and there was nothing funny about lying. But he knows that if he told Deaton the truth, he might never see the book again, and his chance, his _only_ chance to speak to Allison again, to hear her voice, would be gone. Because, books like this shouldn't appear from nowhere. He shouldn't be able to stalk the woods, alone, trying to remember what Allison smelt like, and be caught off guard, abruptly, when that memory seemed suddenly real. He shouldn't have been able to run, to follow that smell, and that scent shouldn't have lead him to an unmarked point in the mud. He shouldn't be able to claw his way through two feet of Californian soil to find a book that smelt so much like...

'...Scott?'

'Yeah?'

'Let her go.' 

His eyes are wet, dribbling down his cheeks. He can't let go. He's tried. 'I wan't to talk to her. I want to hear her voice again. I know...that this book will let me do that - I just need you to read it, to show me how to do it, or even do it with me if you want. You know what you're dealing with; you'll do it the safest way.' Deaton is quiet for a long time, then he exhales, as if he's been holding his breath all the while. 'Scott, I can't do it.' There's a plunging in his belly that wrings his eyes of more tears. 'If you need ingredients, herbs, talismans-'

'It's nothing to do with ingredients-'

'Anything, please-'

'Scott,' Deaton is leaning over the table and holding his shoulders, 'It doesn't need anything like that, it doesn't require any knowledge. You don't even need to read it, and that's just one of the many, many reasons you should forget about this book. I don't know where you got it from, and if you think I'll believe you got it off Amazon-'

'I did-'

'-then you must think I'm a fool. Look, you of all people should know by now that you can't mess around with things like this, especially in _Beacon_ Hills. Sure, there might be the slightest chance that you hear Allison again, that you get to say another goodbye and throw yourself through that misery all over again. You might say the slightest chance is worth it. But what if there's a chance you hurt someone? What if you tamper with something and it has repercussions? Are you willing to risk hurting a friend or stranger...for this? There is no "safe" way to use this book.'

Scott is nodding. He knows the truth when he hears it. That sinking pain still hurts, though. That crushing disappointment.

'Does anyone else know about this?' Deaton asks. Scott shakes his head. 'Not even Stiles?' Deaton presses. No, not even Stiles. _Especially_ Stiles. Losing Allison had been...for all of them it had been...hard. Harder than anything before. Stiles had been his rock, had been there at every terrible moment, and he'd had his own shit to deal with after the Nogitsune was neutralised. But he'd buried all his own struggles to keep Scott afloat. At times, Scott felt like an addict: Stiles would do everything he could to pull him from the abyss and it seemed to work for a while. Then he relapsed. He felt like he'd failed Stiles when that happened because it took even more energy to bring him back from the edge again. Every time, Stiles was there. He wouldn't burden Stiles with this. Wouldn't let his best friend realise how little progress Scott had actually made.

'You haven't told anyone because you know not a single person will tell you this is a good idea. I'm sorry if you put your hopes in me, Scott. Get some sleep. I'll keep it here in a circle of Mountain Ash where it can't be a danger to anyone. Forget about the book.'

* * *

After two weeks, he still hadn't forgotten the book, but he was at peace with it, more or less. He was less at peace with the mounds of work he'd been avoiding. Like a waterfall, it just kept coming, and his capacity to do it was like an eggcup: two months into the school year, the work was overflowing. Essays on the Battle of Gettysburg and Huckleberry Finn; numerous equations and factorials; an upcoming test on Noble Gases. Deadline after deadline, looming, dreading, passing. That cycle of fearing for the future, realising that it didn't matter anyway, then doubting because maybe it could matter, then fearing for the future again; all this time the stack grows larger, heavier on his desk. The eggcup's under water.

The best thing he could think of doing was sleeping, which was easy because after school he was always tired. Tired of the social interactions and the sheer energy it took to appear normal. He would meet up with Stiles tomorrow, because tomorrow was Saturday and Saturdays were reserved for driving - not to any particular place. Just a road and wilderness.

* * *

He's in the middle of class.

_So, you were saying San Francisco isn't where you grew up?_

__

__

_No, but we lived there for more than a year which is unusual, my family-_

A heartbeat, a pen. He's holding one. He's holding it, half-turned, to a face, a smile. It's taken from him, the pen.

_Thanks._

He smells the scent. He hears her voice. He wants to see her again, so much, God he wants-

* * *

He's startled from sleep. The room is not the same as it was when he closed his eyes. He can still smell Allison; it's no longer just a dream. He knows his desk is heavier, that it smells of her. It's not more work, adding to the weight of his desk - it's a black-bound grimoire. But it can't smell of Allison because...because she never owned it. She never mentioned it, it wasn't amongst her things after she was dead.

The scent is pulling him from the bed. He rises, tries to think better of it and can't. Just one chance. His _only_ chance, to speak to her again. It was worth anything. No-one had to know, no-one was here to stop him. He didn't need to read it, and he didn't need ingredients or talismans. Deaton had said as much himself, two weeks ago.

There's a heartbeat in the room. It's not his. It's getting faster and faster, pumping louder and louder, and with each beat, Allison was more alive.

His hand is on the binding and his claws scratch at the leathery surface, retracting whenever he musters some self-control. He can smell her, feel her, hear her.

'Allison?' He knows she can hear him. 'Allison?'

He can hear someone wailing. There is pain in the voice. He shudders, doesn't want to think it was her. It can't be. She'd told him it doesn't hurt.

A scream. High-pitched, loud, close. Utter pain. Her pain. His pain. Pure agony.

Silence.

His hand rests on the wood of his desk, between essays and notes that he should be working on. The clock by his bed reads Friday: 17:10.


	3. I Will Not Answer

There is too much brightness in the room when he wakes. His head is still heavy, but he hasn't the energy to move it, so it stays on the pillow. The room is still moving, though. All by itself.

He has been gifted with a dreamless sleep; the last faint memory is of trees, a ringing phone, and a roaring engine slowly subsiding into the distance. Then, nothing. Only waking, just now.

His hand is in something, enclosed. Whatever is wrapped around it, it's warm and tangled between his fingers. It squeezes a little and then Stiles realises that it's something alive. He peels his lids back and is amazed at how heavy they feel. Just two thin strips of skin, but like stones on his eyes. The room is too bright, and not in warm sort of way. White light, clinical, artificial.

He is in a hospital bed, he realises. It has to be a hospital, because he can smell medicine and anti-bacterial cleaner. There's lots of background noise, beeping, rushing footsteps. He adjusts to the brightness and sees the partition curtains that form his private booth. Then he sees his father's face. They look at one another in silence. They don't need to say anything because his father's face speaks for itself. It is haggard and unshaven, and his eyes are red around the edges and bloodshot. He looked as if he had been drinking all night. His lips start to quiver, then his other hand clasps around Stiles' and he sobs.

'Are,' Stiles croaks out the words, 'are those yours?' He indicates with his eyes to the empty takeout boxes on the table by his bed. Crying turns to laughing, all in a few fluid moments. The tears continue. 'Yes, son. Yes, they're mine.'

'You're bad. Bad dad. Bad.'

His dad keeps laughing and crying. He's brought Stile's hand to his face, uses it to cover himself. Breaths on it. Kisses it. 'Thank God. Oh...thank God. God, Stiles.'

They stay like that for a long time. There isn't a need to talk. They just need to hold each other, to watch each other, to truly get the measure of the fact that they are both real, both together, both alive. But eventually, there is a need for answers.

'Stiles...what happened?'

The air catches in his throat, and in any other circumstance it would be obvious that he'd been caught off guard. Instead, he chokes on the air, brings himself to suppressed coughs, controls them as carefully as he can because each shake of his chest sends fiery bolts through his body. He remembers something Allison had told him, to help with the pain should there be no werewolf to take it from him. _Clear your mind. Think only this: up, down. In, out._ It often worked well, whenever he stubbed his toe on that same damned cupboard in his bedroom. Right now? He could do with more morphine. But he needs to find an answer, a believable one, anything but the truth. His father already knew everything about Scott, about the supernatural, but he couldn't know this. No-one could know or...

_Remember what I told you...remember, the choice is always yours._

For better or worse, he'd already made his choice. He'd made it the moment it was forced on him. Right now, he needed to carry that choice out, before he lost control.

'I...I...' He stammers and struggles for breath. He sobs a little. 'I can't remember. I can't remember anything. I don't know what happened.'

'Stiles,' his father is holding his hands tighter, 'Everything is alright now. You're safe and being cared for. But it's important that you try to remember.' Stiles notices the tension in his dad - the conflict between father and sheriff, waging. It's a conflict he's been familiar with his entire life. The amount of times his dad had to check himself, realise he can't interrogate his son, because he wasn't at work, he was at home. Stile's hasn't seen the conflict more blatantly, more painfully than now however. It punches at him, the realisation that his father is destroyed by the sorry state his son is in, that the sheriff _has_ to know what has happened. The parent resurfaces though, because his dad asks softly, 'What's the last thing you remember?'

'I was...I was lying down, and it was dark. I think there were trees. I was tired.'

'Do you remember calling me?'

'No.'

'You don't remember anything other than that?'

'No.'

His dad seems to be sat on the edge of his seat, wanting to say something but refraining. _It can wait, dad. Please, not now._ He doesn't rely on telepathy, however. He steers the subject away and asks, 'Does Scott know I'm here?' It was a stupid question. Of course Scott knows. Scott will know absolutely everything from his mother.

'He's been here almost as much as I have. His mother sent him home not long ago to sort himself out. He's a mess because of you,' his dad says ruefully. 'I'm sure he's grateful though, that you got him out of so much work at school. Extenuating circumstances and all.' Stiles smiles at the joke, knows that he's slept so well because Scott's been taking the pain. He's probably woken up because of Scott leaving. But one thought leads to another and soon he feels dread. There's a question he doesn't want to ask. 

'Lydia's been here a lot, with Scott,' his dad continues, 'and Malia and Kira, they've been a few times.' The thought floats in his head: _why hasn't Allison visited?_ Another answers: _Because she's dead._ Of course. Life was like that. One moment someone was there, and the next they were gone. _What about Isaac?_

_He moved, remember?_

_Of course._

It seems to Stiles, there are fewer people in the world.

He may as well ask the question that he's dreading an answer to. He'll have to find out sooner or later anyway. 'What day is it?'

'Today is Friday.'

Stiles groaned. That was a long time to be out. 'When can I go home?'

His father makes a hollow laugh. 'Son, let me explain this to you as gently as I can. You called me at four in the morning last Sunday. I couldn't make out most of the noise. I heard only one word: help. I was out of that bed faster than I ever thought I could move. I was dressed and in the car, ready to go. I seized up in the seat, Stiles, because you never said where you were. I had no idea where I was going. All I knew is that where ever you were, you needed help. I don't know what I was thinking, but I was looking at your texts and you'd sent me your location about three minutes before you called. So I drove there, sirens and everything. I think I pushed ninety. I got to you and-'

His father seemed to hiccup, then Stiles realises he's broken down again. The painful exhales are almost like laughter, but they are so much more terrifying to watch, to hear. He has never heard or seen his father like this.

'You never give up on the people you love, Stiles. I didn't give up, not even a second. But the thought was there, back of my head.' He makes a scene with his hands, mapping out his description. 'You were lying face-up in the middle of the woods, about three miles from home. There was a lot of blood. So much blood. You were white as a sheet of paper. There were too many places it was coming out. I was tying so many tourniquets, by the time the ambulance arrived I didn't have a shirt left.' They are both trying to smile, trying to find the grain of humour. 'That was the longest ride of my life. They were saying so many things, trying to talk to you, picking up so many bits of kit, attaching wires. I was trying to stay close, but not get in the way. Then,' his father takes a long, faltering breath, 'then you went into cardiac arrest. They dropped all the tools like they were Christmas decorations at a Halloween party. They started the CPR...and I thought...Jesus Stiles...I was praying...'

It must have taken half an hour to bring his father back to coherence, but he manages. It is something he feels surprisingly good at, mostly because he's happy to be alive, happy to see his dad again. When his dad has stopped shaking, he reaches towards the end of the bed and plucks out a clipboard with too many sheets of paper. 'You have...two oblique fractures, one on each tibia; a fractured pelvis; six broken ribs - they believe some were caused by the CPR; a punctured lung; a fractured clavicle- that's the collarbone; a broken nose; at least forty incisions, three of which are severe, one severing an artery. You lost three litres of blood. In the ambulance, they knew you were dead. They have to do all the shit they did to you, you know, for paperwork, and to satisfy the coroner. Then, you weren't dead anymore.'

'Wait,' Stiles says, pausing for effect, 'does this mean I need a nose job? Can we claim that on insurance? Because my nose is really quite important to me.'

'Stop it Stiles.'

'At least tell me I'll still make captain this year. I'll still be the best one, even in a chair.' His father is laughing again and it makes Stiles smile. They slowly sink back down to melancholy. 'You won't be able to walk again for at least four months, Stiles.'

'I bet they'll still make me write essays though.' It's good to crack a joke, he thinks. Not walking for four months is a hard fact to face without a joke.

'You know son,' his dad is saying, 'laughter is the best medicine. That's what they say, isn't it?'

'Yeah. Now get me more drugs, they're starting to wear off.'

* * *

This time, when Stiles wakes, he feels surprisingly good. Too good. He opens his eyes, knowing who will meet them.

Scott's got his hand, but his eyes are closed and his best friend is grimacing.

'Shit man, you look worse than I do.'

Scott's eye flash open. They well up. He's broken in mere seconds. They're embracing. He's cursing Scott; not too tight, idiot. Scott's breathing into his ear, 'Fuck, Stiles...Just...Fuck.'


	4. I Will Not Doubt

He's been ambushed, which is really unfair, because he's trapped in a hospital bed. There's no justice, no sense of chivalry. His dad, Scott, Lydia, all of them, leaving him cornered and chained up with IVs, pressing him for information he cannot, or does not want, to give. They'd given him barely two weeks recovery and already the race was on to extract as much information as they could. He still couldn't feel his legs, and by the sound of the notes scribbled on the clipboard at the end of his bed, it was probably for the best.

Before the ambush, they'd tricked him by bringing tongue-in-cheek presents. A large bunch of pink balloons with glittering and curled white letters announcing: _Our Little Princess!_ His dad was even in on the jokes because he'd brought Stiles' childhood toy and companion, a stiff and frayed teddy bear called Mr. Beau, placing him on the table so that Stiles couldn't move the embarrassing remind of his childhood out of sight. They had also tried to bring tea lights, but that had been a strict no no from Health and Safety. However Lydia had managed to bring several humorously illustrated, if not a little unoriginal, get well soon cards from high-school and from the pack. He then had to endure a barrage of insults in the scribbled messages.

_Stiles,_

_Heard you've not been well. Really, all the theatrics? It was an essay on Huckleberry Finn, not Ulysses._

_You don't see Scott coming down with so much as a cough._

_Well, when you decide to get better, the lacrosse team need their handicap back._

_Cora_

And so on, and on, all at his expense. God, he missed them. 'Nothing,' he says with exaggerated incredulity, 'from Derek?'

'We tried to get him to write a card, but you know how difficult he can be.' Lydia is collecting all the wrappers, throwing them into a bag. Stiles huffs. 'Probably sees this as a missed opportunity to get rid of me.' Lydia and Scott don't laugh, instead they anxiously turn their eyes to his dad.

'Sorry. Line. Crossed. Even if I cross it on crutches.' He's turned red. The last thing he wants is upset his dad. Again.

'You still can't remember anything, not even the call to your dad?' presses Lydia, changing the subject. Oh, how he used to like her. 

'No,' he answers for the fifth time that evening. 

There's a silence between them that follows, lingers, and it gives Stiles time enough to read their faces and realise that they know something he doesn't, that they're waiting to tell him what that something is, but none of them want the responsibility of raising it in the conversation. 

'What? You know more than me, don't you?' A lie again. They can't know more than he does; he will never forget. He has to remember. He will remember because pain like that cannot be forgotten. His father speaks.

'Derek located a truck about two hundred meters from where you were found - it's bonnet was wrapped around a tree. We seized it to do tests and confirm our suspicions.'

Wait.

'Derek found the truck?'

'Yeah?'

'Why Derek? Why not any of you?'

'...Because Derek's the alpha of _your_ pack and _your_ pack is trying figure out what happened to you...?'

'I'm sorry - I just don't get why Derek's making the effort to leave his home brooding exercises, since he doesn't seem to care if I'm alive or dead.'

'Stiles!' Scott says, shocked. 'Don't be silly, of course he cares you're alive. Who'll be left for him to bully if you were gone?'

'He wouldn't even know if I was dead if you hadn't told him.'

'Well, he did ask.'

Well whoopie fucking doo, Derek _asked_ if he was dead or not. How considerate.

No. He realises this is not because he's annoyed with Derek. Derek is Derek. He's annoyed because he doesn't like how many people know what's happened, how many people, friends, are looking into this dangerous game. He also feels...he feels shame. He doesn't understand why, he only understands that it is unnecessary and unjustified, so he shrugs it off as best he can.

His dad has sensed the tangent they're drifting down.

'Stiles, there was blood everywhere inside the truck; drivers seat, passenger seats. Your blood. On the steering wheel and doors there were finger prints.'

He wonders about who those fingerprints belong to. Algernon. He's taken time to reason that Algernon was probably a person who has been possessed or had their form stolen. He's about to find out who this person is or was. One moment an unlucky bystander, caught up in the monotony of normal life, then BAM, taken by a demon of the supernatural. If that wasn't bad enough, they'd also had to live their life being called Algernon. With a name like that, he wouldn't be surprised if they'd lived more than a century ago.

He bites his lip. Not okay Stiles. It's only okay if the joke is at his own expense. This person, Algernon, could be dead. They could have died horribly.

Line crossed on crutches again.

'Your fingerprints, Stiles.'

He has to call himself surprised, which was surprising because he'd thought he'd prepared for this, mentally. But the initial shock is the crest of a small wave: soon it rolls and bubbles and washes away, subsiding. Demons have powers, so it could somehow mimic him, get his fingerprints on the wheel.

'Leading away from the truck were footprints. Your footprints. They lead directly to you, to the very place you were lying when I found you.'

Again...not beyond the impersonating powers of a demon.

'We ran a number plate check on the truck which led us to a Ms. Katherine Garcia. We questioned her and found out she's unemployed and an alcoholic, trying to set her life straight but struggling. She hadn't noticed the truck was missing because she kept it locked in a garage for three years, ever since she forgot to set the handbrake and the car rolled over her six year old son. She couldn't help us in any other way. She knew nothing.'

She wouldn't.

'The truck and garage keys,' says his father, flipping through a card, but not reading it, 'were on a chain under her front-door mat. They have your fingerprints on them, Stiles, and...and in the glove compartment we found a knife. _The_ knife.' He doesn't need to be told his fingerprints were on that as well.

'So,' Stiles says slowly, 'you think I did this to myself.' 

No-one answers him. Not for a painful while. But Scott is too restless and sensitive to ride out the lack of talking, so he speaks and puts his foot in it. 'Dude...what if...what if it's like the Nogitsune. What if it's something like that, you know? Round two? Or not the Nogitsune but something like that?'

'You think I'm possessed.' He says, too bluntly.

'It doesn't have to be something supernatural, Stiles. It could have been psychosis. You've been through so much-'

'So I'm mad then, Lydia?'

'Stiles...We're just trying to understand what happened,' his father says gently. The guilt and shame crash into Stiles when hears his father's tone. A mocking masquerade, an extra dose of guilt, the helium balloons have to be pulled aside as they are floating into the bed.

But the problem is that he doesn't know how to play this. Does he pretend it was him? That is was psychosis? It would stop them asking questions, it would stop the ambushes. He would never be forced to tell, and if he wasn't forced to tell, no-one else would get hurt. He could be left to make his choice unimpeded. 

To make a choice.

No. The choice was the last resort. He would fight the choice, because he wasn't someone who gave up. This demon would not win. The question was not whether he should fight. The question was _how_? How to fight, whilst still playing by the rules? He notices there is significant pain in his chest. He realises this is because he is breathing more heavily, more quickly. He is not controlling it well and it is beginning to hurt.

'You have to trust me. Dad, Scott, Lydia? You _have_ to trust me. It's not psychosis. It's not that.' He's desperate for the meaning to be conveyed in these words but he realises, quickly, that they can't be. He's lying on a hospital bed having crashed a neighbours truck and cutting himself. He's unstable because he's been possessed before. He's in denial because he doesn't want them to think he could possibly do this to himself. That wasn't the hyper, joking Stiles they all knew.

And as he realises this, the frustration grows. Crashing like a boulder down a rock face, building into a avalanche of bulldozing rubble. He's crying and he screams at himself, calls himself names he's never called another person, because now he's just confirming to them what they suspect, and they're wrong. They're wrong! They're wrong, but he can't tell them why.

'Son, it's okay. I believe you. I trust you.' His dad is trying to soothe him but the words are yet more pain. His tone has an unspoken meaning, and maybe he thinks Stiles didn't notice it, but he does. It said: I believe that you believe you didn't do this to yourself. Scott doesn't help, though he is trying, of course. He's grabbed Stiles' arm, drawing away the pain in his chest. He's saying, 'We're here for you. We're always here for you.'

Stiles and Lydia lock eyes. She hasn't said anything. Then he watches her eyes change a little. It's almost imperceptible. He knows she's listening to something. That something is behind her, because she slowly, as if not wanting to look, turns her head around and stares into the corridor outside the ward. He knows she is seeing something, standing there, non-existent to anyone else. She starts to shiver.

'-best if we don't talk about these things anymore, yeah? We'll change the subject, talk about school or the team or-'

Lydia turns her head, following whatever it is she is seeing in the corridor. It is approaching the bed, heading towards Scott. Now it must be behind Scott. It is sat in his chair, because she is staring at Scott like Scott isn't there, like something much more terrifying is occupying his seat. She is shivering, trembling, then she begins to visibly shake. He can't leave her to the mercy of the vision. 'Lydia?'

She snaps from it instantly and checks Stiles with her gaze. Scott and dad are now looking at her, concerned. 'I'm fine,' she says, 'I just thought I saw...I saw...I saw a hair on your cheek.' She reaches and plucks the hair from Scott's skin. They are still looking at her with worried faces. 'I think we should let Stiles rest.'

* * *

When he wakes from his hospital bed, he knows something isn't right. He can't move his legs, just like he can't during sleep paralysis, which, by now, he's been forced to experience too many times. He realises stupidly that he hasn't been able to feel his legs since he first ended up in this place.

But something is wrong.

Something is in the room. It is approaching him, and he cannot move away from it. The adrenaline is pumping and his mind is screaming a sense of urgency. A raw flush of flight is coursing through him, even though he cannot walk, let alone run.

Yes, it probably _is_ sleep paralysis.

'That'll be four ninety-five, sir.'

He doesn't want to open his eyes, oh God he doesn't, because whomever is speaking to him must be by the bed. 

He doesn't want to, but he does.

The demon is leering at him with an inhuman smile and dog-like set of teeth. It places a large Starbucks paper coffee cup by Stiles' bedside table. When the demon sits on the chair, he bends to it in a way that a normal person could not possibly remain standing; his knees just pivot on the spot until they reach ninety degrees and he is sitting. He appears to move without the irregularities of normal muscle control.

'Why have you done this to yourself, Stiles?'

Everything; every muscle, every neuron in his brain, it all compels him to run, to flip out the bed and sprint down the corridor. But nothing moves. He cannot even turn away or close his eyes.

'You did this to me. It was you.' He had not thought that ghoulish mouth could stretch further across that face, but it does.

'What? Me? This here Algernon?' The demon's arms rise as if they are attached to balloons, the palms facing Stiles, and the fingers spread into stars with each and every fingertip stapled with another layer of bloody skin. Stile's skin.

'You're one nasty fucker, aren't you?'

It's as if the demon lets him in on a joke they have, as if it is saying, 'Oh you, Stiles! How well you know me!' Because the face of Algernon withers into that of a corpses' and begins to rot until the eyes have melted away and there is barely any leathery skin covering the bone. The spectre is attacked by flies, which have swarmed from nowhere and crawl over everything. Flies like the Nogitsune. Then one of those dead hands reaches out and picks up Stiles’. It places a knife, _Run! Run now! Run!_

'Leave me alone! Leave me! Let me go!' he is screaming.

The knife in their hands passes over his body and hovers over the bedside table. The coffee cup is knocked over, spills across the floor, then the blade plunges and meets the wood, scratching, carving, cutting furiously, and barely missing the stuffed feet of Mr. Beau. The wood cannot howl when it is cut.

* * *

There is sweat all over him, dampening his hospital gown and sheets. He is straining with the pain in his chest and the room is rolling, rolling like the deck of a ship or an unbalanced spinning top. The hospital is dark, the lights dimmed for patients to sleep.

It has become a common occurrence, whenever he wakes, for his hand to be in someone else's. He knows it is a werewolf, because the pain in his chest subsides suddenly, draining away.

He just doesn't expect that hand to belong to Derek Hale.

Before he says anything, he notices both their hands are clasped around a knife which is buried into the wood of his bedside table.

He frees himself from the handle as if it is white hot and Derek lets him go by releasing his own fingers. The knife clatters against the surface.

The world sharpens, the air thickens. His mind tells him only one thing: you are going to die, Stiles. You are going to die right now because you cannot breathe.

He cannot breathe. He is trying to, but the air just won't come. He know's he's panicking, but he's powerless to stop it. He tells himself, over and over, uselessly:

_In._

_Out._

But he mixes them up, tries to do them both at the same time, ends up doing neither.

He only begins to regain control when Derek puts their heads together, places a hand on his chest, as if he can control the inhales and exhales, the rise and fall of Stiles’ broken ribcage.

It works, for some unknown reason. It just works. It is calming him down, bringing him back to Earth.

Derek moves away, sits in the chair. He knows Stiles' panic attack is over. The alpha usually has an arrogant smirk or stormy unsettled expression, as if you spilt coffee over his jeans. Right now though, his face is unreadable in the dark.

'How did you get in?' Stiles asks, moving to take a sip of water from the plastic cup by his bed. When he reaches for it, he realises it's on the floor, empty and in a pool.

'Through a window, like always.' Derek gets up and leaves him in the darkness. Stiles wants to call him back. He doesn't want to be alone. There are too many blank spots, too many shadows. What if he falls asleep again? Or even worse, what if this is just another dream? Like fucking _Inception_.

But he still has some pride. He concentrates on breathing, and eventually the alpha comes back with another cup of water. 'Thanks,' he says, toasting and taking a sip. 'Why are you here?'

'I came to see how you were.'

'Whilst I was sleeping? You don't think that's creepy?'

'It's the only time you're not talking.'

Stiles swallows down the water. It is ice-cold. 'You have an excellent bedside manner, you know that?' Derek glances at the knife now lying amongst chips of wood on the table.

'Don't you know? I'm becoming a carpenter.' Derek doesn't laugh, doesn't even smile. Tough crowd. 'Well, now you've seen for yourself: I'm not dead. Scott told you the truth. Thanks for enquiring about me, by the way.'

'I've heard you think I don't care about your well-being.' Stiles winces because Derek is not in the mood for jokes. His face is set with a type of seriousness that makes any humour appear nervous and in poor taste. He hated it when Derek did that. 'I was joking, man. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to accuse you of anything.'

'Good.'

'So...we're cool?

'I've always been cool.' Of course you have, Stiles thinks, taking a gulp of water. But the alpha doesn't leave him, instead he wrings his hands and looks down, his face a beautiful mask. 'Actually Stiles, I have some questions. Lydia has sensed something. She knows there's something more to this. It leads me to think, Stiles, there's something you're not telling us, and I want to know why that is. Then I want you to tell me what it is you're hiding.'

He's been ambushed three times, now. It is easy to ambush someone in a hospital bed.

'I can't remember anything, I've already told-'

'You ask your friends, your own dad, to _trust_ you when you tell them it's not psychosis, but you still insist on saying you can't remember anything? I'm smelling bullshit, Stiles.' Derek issues a growl. Fuck, it's not just an ambush; it's an interrogation. 'If there's something more to this, then there's no reason for you to keep it a secret. You could be putting your friends, your family, your pack, at risk.'

Stiles bites his lip so hard he thinks he's drawn blood. His heart is racing, hasn't really stopped racing. He knows Derek can sense all this. 

Then the thoughts, the doubts, enter his head. Because it's true, isn't it? He's lost a sense of what is real and what is not, and whenever he's been lost and can't trace the truth anymore, he'd always been taught to anchor himself down with facts, with evidence. That's how his dad solved cases, approached every puzzle that was set before him. Study the evidence. 

The evidence spoke thus: he had stolen the truck. He had cut himself. He had crashed and totalled the car. He had crawled out and texted and called his dad for help. He had done all this because he couldn't cope with the deaths that were caused because of him. He had told himself a story of a demon and of the torture, to personify his own self-hate. He had subconsciously liked the game, invented it, told himself he had to play because, just like the Nogitsune, it had given him the power to choose who can live and who can die. A power that something dark within him had become addicted too. Had savoured, had _starved_ for.

And fine, let's assume all this was not the case. Let's agree the slightest chance that anything about Algernon was real: he could still tell Derek. Derek was an alpha. He was strong, he could defend himself against a demon. He could tell Derek everything and then the pack could fight it, instead of waiting for the pieces to fall into place; for the checkmate to be organised on the board.

_Tell him. Go with your gut._

_He's a big guy, he can protect himself. Look at how strong his arms are!_

_Tell him, otherwise you're just sat here, waiting._

_Tell him!_

Stiles opens his mouth, then closes it again.

He will never forget. He will not let this fool him. Oh the games it plays. It has forgotten he has a choice, and that he cannot be fooled into making the wrong choice.

'Derek…’ His voice is quiet. ‘…I can't tell you. I can't tell you anything. Help Lydia, she's on to something. Talk to Deaton.'

The alpha is hunched. His shoulders, their movement, are the only indication of his breathing. Then he rises suddenly, casting Stiles a cold glance. 'I'm continually amazed at how selfish you can be, Stiles. You're feelings, your emotions - do you have any idea how this affects everyone else?'

Stiles just sits, stiff and vacant. He knows the years are rolling back on their friendship. All that trust, crumbling and disintegrating, like a pillar of chalk in a hurricane.

He doesn't notice Derek take the knife or notice him leave the room. He doesn't notice anything until the morning lights switch on.


	5. I Will Deny

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Error: continuity out of sync. Please proceed to forgive the author of this fic.
> 
> So, I've anchored the narrative sometime after the end of season 3. In this version, however, Erica and Vernon were saved and are part of a mega-pack lead by Derek.

The pack surround the metallic table, looking at the plain blade placed in the centre by their alpha.

‘…How did he get another knife? They wouldn’t even let us bring in tea-lights for God’s sake.’ Lydia looks a little hollow, her eyes are darker and betray an exhaustion only brought about by lack of restful sleep. She’s combed her hair, but it still manages to look stiff and wiry.

‘It’s the same knife from the truck.’

‘That’s impossible,’ cuts Malia, ‘unless Stiles’ suddenly gained the power of telekinesis.'

‘It’s the same knife,’ insists Derek. ‘I talked to the sheriff this morning. The knife was supposed to be in a lock-box down at Beacon County Sheriff Station. The lock-box was empty but hadn’t been opened. Plastic bag and everything, just lying there, untouched.’

‘So, there is something more to this.’ Erica sounds intrigued, whilst Cora’s fingers tap against the table. ‘This isn’t just Stiles?’ Malia is increasingly impatient. It’s as if she’s got some Hale blood in her. ‘Fine. We’re dealing with some form of possession then, maybe another Nogitsune or something similar. It has to be.’

‘It doesn’t have to be possession.’ The doctor startles them, despite the quantity of werewolves and super senses, despite the fact they are in his Animal clinic. He has been hovering behind them in the shadows. ‘Scott, Lydia, Derek? You've seen him and talked to him; did you think he wasn’t himself?’

‘Of course he wasn’t himself – he was dosed up on all sorts of drugs. He’s scarred, mentally. There’s a darkness around his heart.’ The words come out in a growl that has everyone glancing at him. He’s frustrated, because Stiles was a mess and it was because he had mixed himself up with the wrong crowd. _His_ crowd. The supernaturals. ‘But,’ he starts to concede, ‘…but he was making his usual jokes. He was trying hard to put up a face, for his dad. For us.’ Lydia grabs his shoulder, pulls him in and pats him down soothingly. ‘Scott’s right, a bit of Stiles was in that hospital bed. It was definitely Stiles.’

‘When I went to see Stilinski, he was sat upright in bed carving his latest piece of modern art into his bedside table. It was like it wasn’t his arm – it was moving too fast, too furiously, for a human.’

‘It wouldn’t be too unusual, though? If it was bad dream or a form of sleepwalking, would it?’ Lydia more than anything sounds like she is trying to convince herself, but the doubts echo amongst the pack.

‘Forgive my scepticism, but how long did it take everyone to realise the difference between human Stiles and the Nogitsune?’ Sometimes he thinks Malia enjoys her abrasiveness, but now he thinks she’s truly devil’s advocate. She challenges them with her gaze. Kira is her usual quiet self, nodding to Malia’s words. Vernon, another quiet one, nods as well. Scott isn’t fooled, though. Just because they don't speak much doesn't mean they're not listening. They’re both still learning to open themselves up within the pack.

No-one else tries to challenge the accusation, because they accept it. They all had, even for a moment, thought the Nogitsune was Stiles. How could they trust themselves now? Derek breaks their silence.

‘It’s not the same Nogitsune, we can be sure of that at least. I called Isaac, got him to check. They still have the Triskelion Urn with the spirit inside. Besides, I don’t think it would bother to come all the way from France just for Stiles.’

‘Then it could be another, then? Or a different type of spirit? Maybe one that doesn’t inhabit him all the time—’

‘When did Stiles disappear?’ Deaton ignores Malia’s expression, not caring whether she appreciates the interruption.

‘He was found on an early Sunday morning…’

‘Yes, but when was the last time he was seen, by any of us?’ Scott shrugs his shoulders in answer to the open question. ‘I didn’t see him that weekend; he said he was working on his essay. The sheriff would know—’ Derek cuts him off, ‘Sheriff Stilinski didn’t see him back from school on Friday. Stiles texted him to say he was staying with you. I know because I asked him when I showed him the knife, which we're keeping. He thinks we’ll be able to learn more from it than the county police.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Scott breathes. ‘I asked him to come over, but he said he was busy.’ Kira finally speaks.

‘Scott and I left him after school. That was the last time any of us saw him.’

He feels sick very quickly. The implicit knowledge, hanging in the air of the clinic’s cold surgery room. _ That wasn’t Stiles texting. Wasn’t the Stiles we know._ Like an aftershock comes the guilt. ‘You mean, I was talking to him the whole time? Whilst he was beating and cutting the…out of himself?’

‘Okay,’ says Malia, swiftly changing the topic, ‘so we’ve nailed down the time of possession. Very helpful, glad that’s cleared so much up, but how do we stop it? Do we need more lichen, or a priest and go full exorcist or something?’

‘I cannot give you any answers, because I still cannot be sure what it is we’re facing. It _could_ be a case of possession, yet it might not be. We can’t fight something properly, we can’t cure it, without knowing exactly what it is.’

Deaton is staring directly at Scott as he says this, and in a way that can’t be anything but deliberate. There is an intensity in his pupils, striking him, as if the doctor is saying one thing to the pack, but something else to Scott. He thinks he knows what it might be, but it’s easier for the moment to pretend he hasn’t understood.

‘Fine, shall we just sit and do nothing then?’ Erica joins Malia as another exasperated pack member.

The idea comes from Derek.

‘Stiles is hiding something. Either his head isn’t in the right place, or whatever’s possessing him is stopping him from saying something. I think the easiest solution, is to force information out of him. Then we can proceed from there.’

Scott doesn’t like this idea. Not at all. It breaches something in him, makes him feel like they’re crossing a moral boundary, no matter what the end. It is apparent Lydia doesn’t like the idea either because there is an accusatory tone when she asks how such information was to be forced from Stiles.

‘The doctor here has a truth serum; we add the serum to Stiles’ IV bag. The effect should be pretty quick.’

‘He’s going to be pretty angry with us, when he finds out.’ Scott needs it to be out there, that Stiles wouldn’t want them to do this, that there is something wrong to this plan.

‘Of course he’s going to be angry, because it’s wrong. We shouldn’t do it.’

‘I like the idea,’ says Malia, challenging Lydia with a defiant look.

‘Me too,’ joins Erica.

‘It seems,’ Boyd says slowly, ‘the only way we can do something. It’s our only plan.'

‘I don’t _want_ to do this.’ Derek has become more emphatic; it is the alpha that is speaking. ‘I won’t enjoy carrying out this plan, but it is our only way, our easiest way, to help Stiles.’

‘It isn’t the only way. We could take our time, studying the subtleties of the case, read up. There’s always a trace that can be found elsewhere.’ Again, Deaton is staring at Scott as he speaks. But what does he want from him? What does he want him to say?

‘But we don’t have time,’ says Cora, her fingers tapping faster against the metal of the table. ‘Whatever it is could strike again at any moment. At Stiles, at us, at anyone in Beacon Hills. The plan is bad, but it’s fast, at least.’

The numbers are beginning to count in Derek’s favour, not that the pack is an explicit democracy. Their alpha isn’t a tyrant – he moves with the approval of the majority of his pack, but there would never be a vote.

Derek has sensed the majority approval. ‘Will you at least give us the serum? Even if you don’t approve the plan?’ Deaton takes a moment to answer, like he’s waiting for someone else to speak. Eventually, he gives his reply. ‘I’ll give it you. I don’t like the plan, but you’ve made worse plans before.’

Derek hums in agreement. ‘Only one person will give Stiles the serum, because it will make it easier to question him, feel less like an interrogation. We don’t need more than one person. As I came up with the idea, I think I should do it.’

‘It would be easier,’ intones Deaton, ‘if it was done by someone he trusts, someone he wouldn’t expect it from.’ Derek looks at the druid with an unusual expression, a mixture of stern confusion and defensiveness. His face has also fallen. ‘Stiles trusts me. I’m his friend,’ he retorts.

‘We know that, but Stiles would expect something like this from you. The pair of you are friends one minute and at each other’s throats the next. He needs someone he will have no reason to doubt, who he gets on with easily.’

_Someone like him. Like his best friend Scott._ ‘I’ll do it. I don’t want to, but it makes sense.’

Lydia has been distracted, she has been moving her head from one direction to another, as if she is trying to listen to something that is very important but also very quiet. The intensity on her face suddenly changes, however, when Scott volunteers. ‘You approve of this, Scott? You of all people?’

He doesn’t approve of anything. He leaves the thinking, the plans, to people like Stiles and Derek. Stiles was always the brains to his brawn. ‘I don’t want to do it, Lydia. But if it’s going to be done, it makes sense for it to be me.’ Malia groans. Loudly. ‘Before we all trip over ourselves volunteering to be Stiles’ former friend, why don’t we just skip the theatrics and just pull the shortest straw.’

‘Do we have any straws?’

Nobody has any straws. Not even strings, marbles, or cocktail sticks. Boyd has a few grey beads, though; they are the remains of a broken wristband. They colour one of them with black ink, mix them up, then distribute them with closed and shielded hands. Derek takes one. He doesn’t appear content to be disqualified. Lydia is too distracted to refuse to take one, but no-one offers her a bead anyway. Deaton is excused because, if he's made the serum, he shouldn’t also have to be the one that applies it. The pack also knows he wouldn't do it anyway.

They open their palms.

In Scott’s, the bead is grey.

‘It’s not me,’ says Malia. ‘Come on, who is it?’

‘It’s me,’ says Erica.

* * *

‘You still have the book…right?'

The room has emptied. They know their next move, having just decided it. Derek wants to see if there’s any lead with the blade Stiles used to cut himself. He may as well be doing something. Lydia is still looking distracted, but when he asked her if she was okay, she had brushed him aside with a wave of her hand. It was best to leave her alone, he’d decided.

‘Yeah, I still have the book. I wondered when you’d mention it, though, I thought it might have been appropriate when the pack was here.’ Deaton is already moving the metal locker in the corner of the surgery. He’s pulling out a set of keys from his pocket, trying to find the right one.

‘Why?’

The keys stop rattling in Deaton’s hands. ‘Why?’ He asks, shaking his head. ‘Because this book appears from nowhere and the same day your best friend disappears?’

No. Deaton was wrong. He was drawing lines between different events that held no relation. It was cruel of him.

‘They’re not linked. It wouldn’t make sense. I didn’t touch the book, I let you keep it. I made the right decision, thanks to you. The book’s been here, ever since.’ He tries to sound sure of those last words, but it fails to convince even himself. The book _had_ to be here. It wasn’t on his bedroom desk, where he had last seen it. Smelt it. The trepidation builds when Deaton turns the lock and opens the door.

He exhales. The black-bound grimoire is there, a sinister dark pupil in a circle of Mountain Ash, staring. Immediately, he smells the faint scent of Allison. It is not as strong as it had been, but the scent was sleeping there, in the locker.

‘Why are you keeping it secret?’

Because there was no link, because it was irrelevant, because what was the use in adding to their worries? There couldn’t be a link between this book and Stiles. It’s not a thought he entertains.

The image surfaces in his mind, of the moment he had first seen Stiles in his hospital bed. Scott was out of breath because he had been running through the corridors, dodging patients and angry nurses who’d been shouting at him that this was a hospital, not the new route of Beacon Hills County marathon. If his mother caught him, sprinting as he was, she would’ve been so much worse.

But he didn’t care. He could sense the faintness of it, of his best friend’s heartbeat. It always terrified him, sensing such a precious organ, feeling it struggle in Stiles’ chest.

When he finally saw Stiles, all cut up, he’s ready to turn. Right there and then, transform into a wolf, just so that he can howl; a terrifying noise, one that echoes hate and revenge, and not brokenness and disintegration, like the sobs he’s now letting out. He’s looking at the sheriff by the bed; a haggard figure, scrawled into the world by a very thin pen, running out of ink. That expression on the father’s face, which betrayed no accusation or blame, only: _ thank God._

This nightmare, this scene which shouldn’t be real—it had nothing to do with the book, or with the nightmare when Allison didn’t answer. Because if it did, Stiles had died, even momentarily during his cardiac arrest, because of Scott. Brought from death by a miracle and delivered into agony, because of Scott.

‘Forgive me, Scott, if I’m reading into this too much, but you had a look on your face, before I opened the door; as if you weren’t sure the book was going to be here. Why is that?’

Because… ‘—It was just a dream! A bad dream. It wasn’t real.’

‘What wasn’t real?’

‘I was in bed, it was like I had woken up, but I hadn’t, and the book was there on my desk. It smelt of Allison, so I tried…I went to it, touched it. Then it was gone. The smell was gone. I actually woke up after that, for real.’

‘…Interesting…’

Scott scowls. What does that mean? This was not an appropriate moment for Deaton’s characteristic evasiveness. ‘It was just a dream, though? The book’s been here the whole time.’

‘Just like the knife was at Beacon County Sheriff Station.’

‘What’s that?’ They both turn around, catch Lydia staring at them, her face strained and distorted. ‘Lydia,’ Scott says, concerned; she looks sick, pallid, with dark shadows under her eyes, ‘Lydia, are you alright?’ She waves him away, looking over his shoulder. The pupils in her eyes are large, he can sense her heartbeat, which is racing. ‘What’s behind you?’

‘It’s just a book I found a while ago. Deaton’s keeping it behind Mountain Ash—’

‘What is that noise it’s making?’

‘Lydia? The book isn’t making any noise.’

‘It’s not a nice noise.’

If there was any remaining colour in her face, it drains away, even from her lips. Her eyes roll back and she starts to fall. Scott is by her, holding her before she can hurt herself on the surgery floor. She is trembling.

‘It’s a fugue state,’ Deaton says, looking down at them. ‘She has sensed death.’


	6. I Will Dream

_You're feelings, your emotions - do you have any idea how this affects everyone else?_

Stiles raises his hand, slaps Derek. The alpha doesn’t flinch, his cheeks take the impact as if they were made from marble. They are cut like marble. His eyes focus on him, attempt to drown him in their depth. He can see himself, a reflection and nothing more, sinking and sinking, disappearing into the darkness of the pupil.

How dare he say those words, how dare he even think them. All the loss, all the pain, all the rebuilding he had done just so that he could reinforce Scott after Allison and stop him from imploding; how dare Derek forget all the effort it takes to keep his shit together. It was not a weakness. It was not something he burdened other people with.

Another unforgivable thought: that Stiles would, in any way, put his friends and family in danger, through his weakness or through his recklessness.

After everything they’ve been through, after all the progress he thought they’d made, Derek still thinks of Stiles as a child. A teen who foolishly goes into the forest at night and searches for a corpse and gets his best friends bitten by a werewolf. Yes, he has made wrong choices, but each time he has grown. He has the right to be understood through how he has changed over the years; he doesn’t deserve to be shackled to his past mistakes.

Or does he? Perhaps it is exactly what he deserves.

The fury builds within him because this is what Derek has caused—the doubting, the turning over of old soils and their rotten treasures, resurfacing, whispering anxieties into his ear.

He raises his hand, but Derek catches it in an iron grip. The alpha is a wall of strength, brazen before him, and he is wrapped in one of his characteristic leather jackets. He could swipe out a hand, transform it into a clawed paw and wipe Stiles’ lower jaw away as if he were brushing away fresh fallen snow.

They lock eyes. Stiles doesn’t agree with the heat that builds within him. It is another rotten treasure, buried under mounds of self-control, mounds which Derek has opened up with his heartlessness. Stiles had buried fantasies like this one because it served him no purpose, and it could never blossom into anything tangible. He tries to move his hand and hit Derek again, but the vice-like hold on his hand barely buckles.

_What do I owe you? Why do I care what you think, especially when you think so little?_

Stiles wants to wake up. As of late, he rarely enjoys sleeping.

* * *

When Stiles finally got his phone back, he spent much time staring at the messages he apparently sent.

His dad, when he had handed Stiles the phone after the device had served it’s time being interrogated by the county police, had offered to remove the messages from that weekend, to completely wipe the device and stop any memories flooding back. Stiles had said no. It wasn’t worth the hassle of lost contacts. Besides, his phone was his palace; it’s not easy to knock down and it is still harder to rebuild.

But there was some sense in wiping some of the messages away, because he would avoid the trance he is in now; a state of shock and horrified wonder. He had sent these messages, these lies. They had come from this phone.

He only realises how long he’s been distracted when more drugs are brought to him. It had been at least an hour since his dad had left, and so he deletes the offending messages on his phone, all too aware that they are not completely erased because they still appear as received messages on other people’s phones. It doesn’t matter; ignorance is bliss.

He spends the next hour swiping through countless faces and profile pictures on his dating app. There’s headless torso’s; blurred house party photos which only have been taken after a particularly hard game of beer pong; there’s pictures that seem to have been taken three miles away, the landscape marked with a tiny indiscernible figure; bios with every line starting with, ‘Not into…’; bios which he swears were copy-pasted from someone else he passed on ten swipes ago, complete with the same jokes; one’s with no bios at all, who count on their pictures, age, or job descriptions to do all the talking. He swipes passed them too.

He puts down his phone and sighs. Not even one doctor. Not one.

He’s being too fussy; he’ll never find someone if he’s so judgemental. It’s the online dating experience: it’s killing romance, making everyone shop for love as if they were clothes. No, Stiles, don’t blame the game, blame the players. Blame yourself, because you have a profile too and most people swipe passed that, same as you do.

He’s supposed to only be passing the time, not biting the remains of his nails and then, once they start to bleed, nipping and pulling at hangnails and half-peeled skin. He’s got bigger things to worry about, but worry is like a ruptured vein: it bleeds into everything else. So when he should be worrying about that ghoulish smile, with its impossible stretch and canine teeth, he also finds the energy to worry about walking again, about how long it will take to recover, about how much schoolwork he’ll have missed, and then lacrosse, his friends and his dad, their safety, about his non-existent dating life. About how Derek now thinks of him.

He puts the phone on the new table by his bed. The hospital will be charging for the old one, a red-faced and scolding nurse had informed him.

* * *

He is on the cusp of wakefulness, but when he reaches the edge, something pulls him back into dreams. Strange dreams. One moment he is talking to himself in a mirror, convincing himself that he is not a child._ I am not a child_, he says it to himself in the mirror again, reassuringly. Mirror-Stiles is wearing a leather jacket and his eyes are yellow. He starts to cry golden tears, then he is kissing a woman made of shadow. Stiles is staring at the mirror. He is watching the kiss as mirror-Stiles’ face reorganises into someone else.

A transition occurs, but he cannot discern when it precisely happens; now he is rocking an empty cot in a slaughterhouse, and the pig carcasses hanging from meat hooks seem to dangle like the decorations of a nursery mobile. There is silence, then the carcasses start to move in a soothing rotation, accompanying a hissing, childish lullaby, which repeats over and over again: _the child has gone astray, the child has gone astray, the child has gone astray—_

He wants to wake up, but he keeps rocking the cot. There is infantile laughter behind him, but he cannot move. The carcasses are not pigs; he has mistaken them. They are corpses.

Another transition; more confusion over when it happens.

He is lying in his hospital bed looking at the concerned face of a friend. He realises after a while that he is murmuring, has been saying the same words for some time: _the child has gone astray_; it is an echo from the last dream. He should know the face of the person he is speaking to; he will remember it when he wakes, he’s sure. Right now, he can only call the face, ‘friend’.

‘What child?’ asks the friend.

‘_The_ child,’ he answers vacantly. 

It’s not his voice that is coming from his mouth—the tone is too hollow and cold. It is higher pitched than his normal voice. Nor does his mouth move at his command when the words are summoned.

‘Stiles, there was something you wanted to tell Derek, wasn’t there? You said you couldn’t tell him what it was.’

He is nodding, as if there is a string pulling down on his chin and up from his forehead. 

‘Who—or what—hurt you and left in the woods?’

‘_ The_ child,’ he repeats.

‘What child?’ The friend’s voice is becoming frustrated.

‘The child that has gone astray.’

The answer does not satisfy the friend, he senses.

‘Why can’t you tell us anything?’

‘The rules.’

‘So, you’re playing a game? Games have rules?’

‘Yes, oh yes.’

‘What is the game?’

‘I must choose: myself or the summoner. I must make my choice when the time comes. The summoner or me.’

‘I don’t understand…choose what?’

‘Breathing and beating; broken and buried? Life or death; pain or peace? The summoner or the martyr?’

The friend does not stir, does not make any noise. He has almost transitioned again, into a different space and time, when his friend asks another question. He, dutifully, answers.

‘Scott McCall.’

‘I think I understand…How do _we_ win the game?’

‘There can only be one winner.’

‘Yes, but how do _we_ win?’

‘There will only be one winner.’

‘Fine, have it your way. What are the rules to this game?’

‘Rules to rule; there is only one—’

‘Okay, one rule—which is?’

‘It’s a secret; my little secret.’

‘What happens when you break the rule?’

He does not control his mouth, but the muscles taught and flex and grind his teeth together, stifling fury and hate. He thinks he will begin to chew through his own cheeks, break his own molars, unhinge his own jaw.

‘The child will hunger; the child will feed; the child will chase the opened ear and then that ear will bleed.’

There is no reply, not for a long time. He transitions, the fabric of his thoughts unweave themselves, try to re-thread themselves into impossibly small eyes of needles; eventually, they push through and stitch a new tapestry.

He is walking along a lane in the woods in the daylight; the asphalt beneath his sneakers is dark and moist and littered with an array of autumnal colours, leaves of russet and chocolate, blood oranges and merlots. It has rained not too long ago; there is a smell of earthy rot in the air, a taste of moss-covered wood and dew carried on the spine of a bracing wind. The leaves that have avoided the damp are carried across his feet and become stuck in the puddles, drowning.

He walks on, even though he senses danger. He loves the woods in and around Beacon Hills Preserve. They are his home. Whatever hides in the mists, or behind the backs of trunks, he can fight; whatever tries to veil itself under the leaves has ways of being unmasked and forced to crawl into the moonlight. He has friends who can help him fight, even if they are not walking with him now, and he knows they hold his back. They prevent an ambush.

This feeling of danger grows stronger, but still he places one foot before the other. He keeps walking down the lane. He passes a deer on the road, covered in flies and mangled; it has a bloated tongue that balloons out of its mouth. The antlers are smashed to splinters and its belly is spilled over the road. Overhead, crows are flying; they are not circling like carrion or perched on branches, waiting to descend—they fly passed him, down the road.

He feels the adrenaline rush through him. It is pumping. His mind, as it as done so many times before, tells him to turn around and run. If the dream was not so vivid, were not impossible to be real, he might have mistaken the feeling for sleep paralysis.

Because there is something here, with him. He must run from it.

He must turn and run away. 

Now.

Run.

But he cannot. He continues to walk, and then, he spies the pack of wolves crowning the next rise of the lane. Eight? Nine? Their eyes form a row of shining red beads. There are enough to tear him apart in moments. 

They bolt from the hill, darting towards him. He tries to scream, but his jaw feels like it is nailed shut. They are too close now. He cannot outrun them. Instead, he keeps walking.

They pass, as if he was just another tree. They don’t stop, not even to smell him. It is as if they cannot see him. 

More are running.

Even though there is daylight, he sees the coyotes amongst the trees. They are racing too, and they do not stop to look over their shoulders to see if their pack mates are following. They are chasing the crows, or any other birds or animal, chasing the heels of whatever runs down the lane, running from where he walks. An urgent migration, one that is occurring in all directions, outward, like ripples in a great pond.

He has only noticed now, when the warped bows and creaking branches are empty of life, how quiet the preserve can be. There is only the sound of the wind, which, when he reaches the top of the next hill, holds it breath and brings the world to complete stillness.

Not far down the lane, he sees the cracks in the asphalt. They thread down the road like painful scars until the surface is completely ruptured by the trunk of a large tree, thrust form beneath the ground, like the head of a wooden hammer. A little further from the roots, closer to Stiles, there is a broken mass lying in the mud and banked with fallen leaves. From skull to waist it is split open, cracked like an egg, and each half stares severely at a different point in the sky. The body is hollow and abandoned, a shell that has been cast off, and from it winds a trail of blood in the soil that intersects the road and wraps around the tree stump.

As he had done with the deer, Stiles passes the opened body of Algernon. When he nears the beginnings of the roots, he hears sniffling.

He remembers once, when he was very young, he had played alone in the preserve. He had promised his parents not to stay out too long, and that he would go no further than the end of the road. But the road was short, and the forest was far more exciting. He had played amongst the redwoods and pretended he was a tree spirit, an elf, a king, a lost boy. Then soon he didn’t need to play anymore, because he truly was lost. He had grown terrified as the day waned and foreboding drew across the sky in the form of a bloody band, heralding dusk. He was by yet another tree, one that had looked like all the others. Resting against the timber, he had sniffled and cried. Then he walked some more and found a road, the same road that drew him back home.

The memory arrives to him as if it were distilled into a single emotion, and it momentarily overpowers him with a feeling of empathy, one that even overrides his terror.

His jaw unscrews suddenly, and he says over the trunk, ‘It’s okay, there’s no need to be afraid.’

But there is. There is every reason to be afraid.

It stumbles out into sight on legs that have barely mastered walking. It is not plump like children should be at that age; it is not ringed with fat and pudginess. It is naked and emaciated, covered in gore and blood; you can see its ribs and the gauntness of its limbs; it has a hungry mouth, ridged with wolf-like fangs; its eyes are burning golden rings. They are the eyes of more than a demon.

It casts out its branch-like arms, searching for a hand.

He understands suddenly, and his mouths drops with the horror of it. He understands what that childish, bony hand is grasping for.

* * *

His eyes fly open.

He is wet, drenched from face to feet. He can feel the uncomfortable damp through the hospital bed sheets, but he doesn’t care. He has recognised a face, remembered a dream that now, he realises, was not a dream at all. He sees morning light piercing the windows of his ward through the closed blinds. One of the blinds looks disturbed and wrinkled, as if something has climbed through it and not put it back into place. It must have been hours ago.

He throws himself up in his bed; the pain in his chest and torso is instant, and the dizziness unbalances him back into his pillows. He takes a few agonising moments to regain his breath and orientate the world, then he leans up more deliberately, still urgently, and starts searching for his phone. He finds it after knocking over several cards and empty water bottles. He flips through the contacts, selects the name; it starts ringing. It continues to ring. It is painful to be waiting all the while, waiting for an answer. There is a click and the there is no more ringing.

‘Erica? Are you there?’

There is a shuffling noise, as if the phone is being passed between the covers of a bed. The signal thumps and bounces; the phone has been dropped on the floor. It fumbles again, as if it is being picked up.

‘Feed,’ comes the child’s reply.

The call is disengaged, but Stiles doesn’t sit staring at his phone. Doesn’t sit, paused, wondering how life and nightmare had blurred so effortlessly in the last few weeks. He scrolls through his contacts, selects another name. It rings out and there is no answer. He picks another name; he will go through every name on the list if he has to. A quiet, serious voice answers.

‘Stiles, what’s wrong?’ Derek knows something is wrong because Stiles has never called him, certainly not so early in the morning. They have only ever texted one another and those messages were short and to the point.

‘Erica’s in danger. It’s found her. You need to save her.’

Derek doesn’t ask any questions; there is only a short pause over the line. ‘I’m leaving now,’ he says, his voice dark, impossibly more serious. Stiles is nodding, then he realises this can’t be communicated over the phone. It doesn’t matter, however: Derek has hung up.


	7. I Will Walk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay - I went on holiday, I got a new job, I moved house. Yeah it's been manic.
> 
> I really appreciate feedback, so thank you!

12:07:_derek nobody is responding to my calls. know its a bad time but its been a few hours now and nobody is responding. let me know when you can_

14:21:_found her out in the woods_

14:22:_is she alright_

14:22:_no shes dead._

15:01:_please visit derek. when you can please come to the hospital_

* * *

‘You don’t look yourself, kid. You shouldn’t be afraid to ask for more drugs; you younger kids are always afraid to ask for things, to ruffle some feathers—that nurse, Olivia, she knows we’re all in pain, but she’s still hiding the OxyContin behind that three-ring circus she calls a desk, and those glasses of hers; she looks like Jeffrey Dahmer. Sometimes I think they just like watching people suffer. My uncle drove ambulances in Fresno in the seventies and he said to me once that the real psychos don’t go stalking the alleys at night, shanking people; the real psychos get signed off as doctors and nurses, carve out a career in the medical profession. You hear it in the news all the time, the nurses who get away with hundreds before they get caught—too late for us sons of bitches, though. Say you died from some complication or other bullshit, just to cover all their backs, right? Make up a whole new language for it to settle people down, make them think it’s normal. A few bad eggs can’t spoil the farm. Listen: anyone who likes cutting people up for a living likes to shank, plain and simple. They’ve all thought about it—’ 

Stiles is hearing this noise, but he cannot register it, can’t maintain the façade of listener. Politeness? How little it meant now. He lets Mr. Borstein go on whilst he stares at the same spot on the floor that has occupied his attention all morning. 

‘—and don’t think I don’t know about my saltwater taffy,’ bites the old man, nodding to Stiles and turning to the bed next to his. ‘Wynona Ryder over here has been diagnosed with a real case of kleptomania. She’s got longer arms than Freddy Krueger.’ He starts hissing at Mrs. Kuiper, who is too lethargic with dementia to understand. ‘The only reason I haven’t left this bed and given you a good shaking is because it’s salt water taffy. Who the fuck eats salt water taffy? My granddaughter doesn’t, that’s sure as hell. She should have become a nurse, that one, a real mean bitch.’ The old man sucks his teeth. ‘You’ve got some odd friends, boy.’ 

Stiles’ eyes flicker. ‘What?’ 

‘Your friends, or lovers, or visitors, or whatever. This is a hospital ward, kid, we don’t all switch off like those dummies on amusement rides when the lights go out. Three beds down, that fella’s got gout and gangrene up to his kneecaps; he don’t sleep a wink at night.’ Mr. Borstein looks across the hall to another bed. ‘—And he deserves it, you son of a bitch!’ He suddenly barks. ‘He’s about as safe as Polanski at a high school dance, and that one,’ he points to another patient, ‘that one’s got “an anal fistula”, or, to us normal folk, a hole in his asshole. He don’t sleep a wink either. Deserves it too,’ the old man spits beside his bed, ‘fucking lawyers. But these friends of yours…usually visitors come during the right hours—hey, I’m no tell-tale, don’t look at me like that son. Besides, you know I can’t stand these doctors and nurses; it’s like _One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest_ in here. It’s just that most folk don’t limb through the windows when they hand over their get-well-soon cards and other tacky shit.’ 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’ 

‘Hey kid!’ He barks again, tapping his skull severely, ‘Do I look like one of these poor simple bastards? Do I look like Dorothy in her red slippers, high on barbiturates? Count yourself lucky this ward here’s got only two non-quacks. I _told_ you, I ain’t no tell-tale. Stop worrying. You know, it’s a good thing that you get so many visitors, more than anyone else on this ward, not that you deserve a medal. You’ve got a good pah, too, son, because he loves you. We all see it, even this one sees it,’ he points towards Mrs. Kuiper who is looking aimlessly at the ceiling, ‘even this stealing Nancy, and she’s a vegetable. A crafty one, at least. But you’ve got some good folks, kid.’ 

Stiles can’t hold back a croak. He couldn’t control his breathing and his chest, as always, was burning. He dries up quickly, staring at the floor again. 

‘Jesus kid, you alright? I’m no doctor but looks like you need some Elavil, or whatever they’re calling it these days. That’ll get you tap-dancing in no time.’ He begins shouting again, but now he aims his voice at the nurses' desk down the hall. ‘More drugs! This ain’t the fucking war! This fella here needs smiley pills and stat!’ 

‘Please…please stop…don’t.’ Each word is a croak, empty and exhausted. He doesn’t expect the old man to listen, and he is surprised when Mr. Borstein quietens. ‘Sorry kid, I have foot-in-mouth syndrome too.’ 

They are quiet for a long while, and Stiles is oblivious to his surroundings because he is staring at the same spot on the ward’s floor. It is marked by a dead fly that must have dropped sometime in the night. 

‘Psst! Can I tell you something, kid?’ Mr. Borstein continues anyway. ‘I didn’t have a pah like yours. He used to slap me around a lot after he finished his stouts. He didn’t like kids, not one bit, but he had five of them because that’s what the T.V. commercials told him was right and normal. You’re lucky kid, if my life’s like anything to go by, you’ll do just fine. You see because kids always end up like their parents in some way, no matter how much they try to deny or fight it. I was unlike my pah in almost every way, but I loved the drink, just like him. Had my own kid and drank away his childhood. Hit him once or twice as well. He was a good lad, though. Smart too. He got away from me as soon as he could. Married. Had a little girl, and never let me near her. Smart kid. I always had in my head, all these years, that I’ll sort it out with him, when I’ve stopped drinking. But I never stopped drinking. I thought I had all the time in the world—or at least, my world anyway. I thought yes I’m getting on, but there’s still time. Wasn’t me I should have been thinking about. He was twenty-seven when he sat on the john and his heart,’ Mr. Borstein signals with his hands, ‘just exploded. That was that. Haven’t touched a drop since.’ 

Stiles is shaking his head, not taking his eye off the dead fly on the spot on the ward floor. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ He asks. 

‘Because you’ve got that same look about you—the same one I had when my boy died. You’re looking for meaning in some tragedy, trying to excuse yourself of blame but realising that it’s all your fault anyway. I want to give you some advice because you’re going to need it in life: people die. They don’t die like they do in the movies—they just drop like bowling pins, one by one, off-camera, alone. Sometimes, God help us, they drop with a few other pins. There’s no reason to it; there ain’t no cause. God Almighty doesn’t explain it to you, they just,’ he knocks the table with his fist and Stiles startles in his bed, ‘_drop_. Don’t ask yourself why. Don’t flatter yourself into thinking it had anything to do with you. Don’t feel guilty the next time you take a shit. The world turns; it doesn’t give a fuck about you.’ 

Stiles raises his eyes. ‘Sometimes people die young. Sometimes people die because they are killed by others. Sometimes there is meaning in their death because it should never have happened. Perhaps, sometimes, people _should_ feel guilty, because they are too forgiving of themselves.’ 

The old man and Stiles level their eyes at one another; they each search for the tacit meanings and they each fail to reach an understanding. 

‘It’s not a question of conscience,’ says the old man. ‘It’s a question of survival. Guilt is a poisonous thing.’ 

Stiles lies back and closes his eyes.

* * *

Scott and Lydia visit three days later. 

His dad, on his daily visits, had insisted he’d heard nothing from them, and had promised, if Stiles wanted, to contact them and figure out what was going on. Stiles had told him, no. They will come, and they are here, even it had taken them three days. 

They sit together, him in the bed and them either side. They are not talking much, though Lydia is speaking much more than Scott. It is about trivial things; schoolwork, the last fight that broke out at school, this interesting book she’d been reading. Scott just listens intently, holding Stiles’ hand, drawing away pain, even though much of it has now subsided. 

But Stiles’ patience wears away at their evasiveness. He wants to ask them so many questions but cannot think how to phrase any of them. Lydia is talking about a headache she’s been having, when he interrupts her and asks Scott the question he most wants answered. 

‘How did she die?’ 

They both turn pale. Scott looks away, but Lydia looks straight into him. She wrestles with herself, wrings her hands, looks to him again. ‘She had a seizure in the woods.’ 

‘That doesn’t make any sense…she is a werewolf.’ 

‘No, it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how she died.’ 

‘…Her parents…do they know she visited me? Do they know I’m the reason she’s dead?’ 

Scott’s hand jerks away and Lydia covers her mouth with her hand. ‘Stiles…this had nothing to do with you.’ 

He starts to bubble; the tears boil from under his lids. He begins to shake. ‘No…no you’re wrong. I had a nightmare…she must have visited in the night…I thought I was still dreaming…_It_ convinced me I was still dreaming…and I told her…I told her things she shouldn’t have heard and now she’s dead because of it. It wasn’t me, I swear! I didn’t mean to! It just came out!’ 

‘Stiles!’ Scott has gripped him by the shoulders and is holding his shaking, trying to quieten the wailing. ‘We know. We sent her to you. We put truth serum into your meds. It was us, the pack. We made the decision together.’ 

‘What?’ He shrugs off Scott’s hands. ‘What did you say?’ 

‘You told Erica, because of a truth serum—we wanted the truth Stiles. We didn’t know this would happen; we didn’t know it was this messed up. We just wanted to help…it was the only way we thought we could do it.’ 

Stiles knows he’s becoming absent again, staring at the floor. His conscience, a floodwall, and each word said to him is a new wave, more violent than the next. One after the other, he has been struck with blow after merciless blow. Now, the water is deep and swirling, and it is manifest in his head as an aching, as a sudden exhaustion and apathy. 

‘I asked you to trust me. I told you I couldn’t tell.’ 

‘We know,’ answers Lydia. There is a deep shame in her voice. 

‘You never trusted me after all, did you?’ 

‘Stiles, don’t blame Lydia. She was one of the only one’s against the idea. She tried to stop us.’ 

Stiles looks to her and says coldly, ‘She didn’t try hard enough.’ He cannot discern whether it is shame or guilt that makes her eyes water and turn away from him. ‘And you Scott, you gave this idea the green light?’ 

‘Yes, I did.’ 

‘It’s obvious you didn’t come up with it; it’s too smart for you. You of all people should have trusted me. But then, you never really think about things, do you?’ 

He doesn’t understand where all the words tumble from. They are fuelled by rage and hate and a desire to hurt someone; they are tinged with an exasperation that fails to reconcile something within him. He wants to pour more out; he wants to hurt them as best he can, strikeout, just so they can realise what their idiocy has done. 

He regrets the words even as they continue to spill from him, as he watches their effect in the faces of his friends, but he will think on them later. All he can channel is his rage and his desire to hurt just as Erica had been hurt. 

‘So, who came up with this plan? Was it Deaton?’ 

‘No, he was against the idea, same as Lydia—’ 

‘—Stiles we’re so sorry—’ 

‘You can’t apologise to me, not yet. You can’t apologise to Erica.’ 

‘Stiles—’ 

‘It was Derek’s idea, wasn’t it?’ 

They both go silent, Lydia stifles back tears with her hands, rubbing her makeup across her face. Scott is red, bright red, and is reaching out for Stiles’ hand but not managing to grasp it because it has been sharply pulled away. 

Stiles swears so loudly, he is sure it can be heard down the corridor. 

‘Tell him, tell the coward, that he should come and talk to me, like he should have done, days ago. Tell the coward he should come and face me because, unlike the rest of you, I’ll be the only one to tell him what he _should_ be hearing right now. Tell him that.’ 

‘Please Stiles—’ 

‘And what took you so long? I was sat _waiting_ here, and nobody told me anything. I thought I’d killed her, that it was all me. Nobody even told me how she’d died. Sat, waiting, whilst all of you figured out the best way to tell me you’d fucked up. She was my friend too! She was my friend too.’ 

_You have beautiful eyes… _

_I have beautiful everything._

‘We would have come sooner,’ Lydia regains herself, ‘but we couldn’t. These last few days…I was out, Stiles. I saw her death, but I thought I had control over my powers by now. Instead, it overwhelmed me. I wasn’t any use to anyone until it was too late. Then Erica died and everything…everything’s been falling apart.’ Scott senses her difficulty and picks up after her. 

‘The other packs are moving. Everything is moving. Deaton’s saying Beacon Hills is quiet. Too quiet. When everyone found out she was dead, they either mourned or packed up. Boyd’s done both. He says that he and Erica didn’t ask or expect this of them. He’s moving north with his sister. Peter’s gone, too. Derek tried to stop him but he just piled stuff into his truck and drove away. Tried to take Cora and Malia with him, but they wouldn’t go. He said he knew it was time to go, and that we should go too.’ 

_So why don’t you?_

He almost says it, another spiteful string of words intended to injure. He opens his mouth to say them but stops because he remembers something suddenly. He clings to the memory of an older man speaking and telling him: _ you’ve got some good folks, kid._

He wrings his eyes out with his wrists; he’s tired and doesn’t want to have to consider or else risking saying something he regrets. ‘I think you both should go. I need to sleep. I need to be alone.’ 

‘Stiles please—’ 

‘I _said_ I want to be alone.’ 

Lydia appears stuck in a great dilemma; she is tortured between two equally painful choices and in her fear of the pain she has become indecisive. Scott nudges her shoulders and helps her leave. They leave him more candy. Scott forgets his jumper. They leave awkwardly, and Stiles can see by their expressions that this is not how they wanted to part. He doesn’t care. Let it consume them.

* * *

The board at the end of his bed begins to contain fewer papers, but the nurses have noticed his quietness, his proneness to sleep throughout much of the day. They must have weighed up the damage to his legs against his temperament, because they begin to encourage him to lean out of bed and begin moving his toes. He was at first reluctant to move anything, and he wanted to sleep, but they couldn’t be stopped. They had told him and his dad that Stiles would not walk for up to four months, but it had become clear to them that he was healing, and faster than they had expected. Some of the cuts had disappeared completely, whilst most others have left scars running like claw-marks across his skin. There are a few, however, that continue to weep. His surgical scars still throb, though the stitches are disappearing. 

His dad helps him move when he is being forced to do his physiotherapy. The staff make it clear that once he can make it to the bathroom, he would be free to return home. They cannot wait to be rid of him, he senses. 

The first time he moves, it is too much. Not only do his legs swell and warn him with constant throbbing, but also some of his cuts rupture and bleed into his gown. There are patches up and down his body. His dad has to help him back to his bed, staining patches into the bedsheets, then his dad has to take some timeout, biting his fist in the corridor. Mr. Borstein is howling: ‘Nice one, kiddo!’ 

The next day, they try again, after they are sure Stiles is patched up. Some of the cuts rupture again, but now they realise it is inevitable and as the cuts are only minor, they decide it is not worth quitting over; as long as he can overcome the swelling pain in his legs and lean on his crutches, he will continue to learn to walk again. The nurses tell him it is not the damage to the nerves that prevents him from standing—instead it is the pain that he must unlearn. Having been bedbound for over three weeks, he has simply forgotten how to trust his feet.

* * *

His doctors have become amazed by his progress, he thinks. His injuries had been made four weeks ago and by now his chest-pain had subsided so much, he barely noticed it until he started breathing heavily. 

His dad catches his eye one evening, after holding him for almost an hour in the hospital corridor so that Stiles could gently tap his feet against the floor, using his crutches to hold the majority of his weight. 

‘Are you and Scott alright?’ 

‘Why?’ 

‘His mother called, wanted to know why Scott wasn’t visiting you. She usually sees him too when he visits.’ 

‘Just wanted this week to concentrate on the walking, dad. Too many cooks, you know?’ 

‘Okay. You know, you’ve been doing amazing. I don’t think they thought you’d be treading water so early. You’ll be able to...leave soon.’ 

It is an odd choice of phrase, he thinks. He doesn’t say anything, though. 

‘I know. I always aim to impress.’

* * *

He has taken himself to the bathroom in the middle of the night on his crutches. The effort would have taken Mr. Borstein ten minutes, and he was a slow walker. A very slow walker. It took Stiles forty-five minutes to get there and come back. On each outward thrust of the crutches he makes, he drags his feet across the floor. It is mostly painful, but now the bone-itching has set in, he’s just grateful to be moving. When he gets back to his bed, there is a man sitting on it. He is drawing his hands through the sheets, pinching the cloth where there are stains of blood made whilst Stiles has turned in his sleep. 

‘I wondered when you’d visit,’ Stiles rasps. It is a mixture of his effort to move and his anger, which is already building within him. When Derek rises in surprise and approaches to support him, he hisses. 

‘Don’t you dare. Leave me, I can do it on my own.’

The alpha doesn’t leave, stays close by, but he does as Stiles demands. Stiles settles in a chair by his bed. It is right, he thinks, that he should sit in the visitor chair for once, whilst Derek can sit in the hospital bed. A reversal, of sorts. The bed dips at the werewolf’s weight. It appears a small bed when Derek is sat on it. The crutches clatter as he tries to set them up against either side of his chair. 

‘So, how does it feel?’ 

He doesn’t look up from his chair. He must not look at Derek when he says what he has to say. He will tell Derek what no-one else will tell him. It has to be done, and he will be the one to do it. Erica did not die without someone asking questions like this. 

‘How does it feel to know you are the sole reason someone is dead?’ 

Stiles raises his head when he says these words, but he regrets them as soon as he sees the face; the wet eyes, and the darkness underlining them, ringing them, unholy halos; the opening and closing mouth and the stubble on the jaw and cheeks; the unkept hair, greasy, uncombed; the creases in the leather jacket. 

Derek shudders and wilts. ‘I’ve killed people before.’ 

‘People you were supposed to protect?’ 

The alpha doesn’t say anything. 

‘You should have trusted me. I told you I couldn’t say. You should have trusted me to mean those words. You shouldn’t have to second guess my motivations, my weaknesses, my failures. I have known you for years, and not once in all that time have you truly trusted me. After everything I’ve done for you, for your pack, for Scott. I know I’m only a human, but—’ 

‘Stiles—I know. Call it a lesson learned. I’ll have to live with it. But from now on, I trust you. I’m...uh...I’m....you know, for what it’s worth...I’m sorry. I’m fucking very sorry.’ The words disintegrate the more Derek speaks. 

Stiles is left momentarily dumbfounded, searching for words like he’s moving one of those claws in an arcade; each time he grasps, the response he searches for slips from his grip. He has never, not in all the years, heard Derek Hale apologise. Never. He’s never been sure if this was because Derek had always thought himself infallible, or if an admission of guilt was too much an exposure of weakness for the Alpha. Yet, tired and crumpled as he appears now, Derek has never appeared more vulnerable. It doesn’t fit right, it juxtaposes his first experiences with Derek, when he was constantly being slammed against things. 

But Stiles is not over the pain, not so quick to forget Erica. He thinks, he appears the asshole to anyone else; he has said things to his friends that he’d never thought he’d say; he’s kept the fury, the spite. He has looked at the pathetic visage that is Derek Hale, and he has discovered that even now, he has no pity. Not yet. He has none because he has lost a friend, he has lost a pack member, and she was lost because they had not trusted him. Stiles doesn’t lose friends. He doesn’t let them die. He does anything, everything, to keep them safe. 

He doesn’t know what to say and therefore he chooses to stay silent. The moment draws out for far too long, and over time it becomes all the more oppressive. Stiles watches the way it makes Derek fidget and move restlessly where he sits. Eventually, he breaks the silence because he looks as if it went on any longer he might tie his limbs into knots. 

‘Look, Stiles...It was my idea, I gave it to the pack. You couldn’t say what had happened to you, you couldn’t say who had done it, was doing it. We thought it was shock or some form of manipulation. Most agreed it was what we should do, some didn’t. We went with the plan anyway and it was the wrong decision. We did it because we wanted to protect you, we wanted to make sure that whatever attacked you didn’t have the time to attack someone else. We rushed into it. But she didn’t die out of stupidity, Stiles. She died for the same reason any of us would die. For the pack.’ Stiles is shaking his head in panic. The next wave was crashing against the quayside and he was afraid the walls will truly buckle this time and crumble into the sea. 

‘She died because of me; she died because of you—’ 

‘She died _for the pack_. Like any of us would. You’re not the only hero in Beacon Hills, Stiles. You’re not the only person who would die for their friends.’ 

He knows this, though he doesn’t want to. It will be something he has to think about, whilst he plays the _fucking_ game. For many people such a revelation might bring them profound comfort, but not Stiles. He doesn’t like the thought at all. 

‘She didn’t know what she was getting into, Derek.’ 

‘Did you, all those years ago?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Would you change it? Would you go back and run away from it?’ 

_Never._ Not once had even thought of it. Derek looks as if he didn’t need an answer; he has found one in Stiles’ expression. Derek makes a wan smile, puts a large hand on Stiles’ knee. The touch catches him off-guard because he has never been touched by Derek before—at least not in a non-violent way. 

‘Whatever this thing is that hurt you, that killed Erica: we’re going to send it back to hell. And we’re not going to lose anyone when we do it. I promise.’ 

He’s not sure it’s a promise Derek can keep. It leads him to a question he realises he hasn’t asked. ‘Before she died, did she tell you anything about what she heard from me?’ Derek’s eyes are looking straight at him; they are dangerous and deep, and they have changed colour too many times for Stiles to keep track of. It doesn’t matter. Whatever colour they are, they will always betray a hidden sadness. On the surface, with the smirks and the growls and the dangerous glares, they will always appear sour and cold. 

‘She said she would tell us everything when she came back from the hospital. But she didn’t come back. But before she hung-up she told us some details. She said that whatever it was, it appeared demonic, that it was playing a game and the game has rules, that if you break the rules, you die. That it likened itself to a hungry child.’ 

‘That’s all?’ Stiles says, crestfallen. He must be careful. He cannot say something that breaks the rules. Derek gives a low shrug, rolls his jaw. ‘She didn’t have time to say anything else. But we’ve learned that somehow, she must have broken the rules. With you telling us that you can’t say anything: one of the rules is that you can’t tell anyone about the game.’ 

Stiles doesn’t make any acknowledgement or response. He looks away. He will not test what the boundaries of the rule is. The pack still has very little to work off. The information is nothing considering the price that was paid. 

Derek keeps his hand on Stiles’ knee. He becomes more aware of this the longer it rests there. 

‘I..uh...I’m sorry...again...Don’t blame Scott, or Lydia. They care about you so much. I..uh..so do I.’ 

He’s right, of course, but Stiles won’t tell him that. The wolf doesn’t need any more ego-stroking. 

He has said things he regrets to Lydia. He needs to talk to her, when he’s not exhausted from using his crutches. With Scott...he needs to navigate a maze of emotions. He’s sure his best friend is in a dark place, struggling to make choices, doing, as he always has, what he thinks is right. He will have to swallow some of his grievances, to help Scott. It is something he is willing to do. Has always been willing to do. 

Derek lifts his hand, indicates with it to Stiles’ legs. ‘You’re starting to walk again.’ 

‘Well, I can make to the bathroom if that’s what you mean? The nurses say I’ll be free to go home soon.’ He manages to pull off a face, one that simulates a child who enjoys being the pet of their teacher. His expression falls a little however when Derek turns a light shade of red and moves to awkwardly scratch the back of his head. The leather creaks at the movement when it is forced to bend. 

‘Again...I’m sorry Stiles but...you’re not going home,’ he finishes. Stiles blinks. ‘What?’ 

‘We’ve talked to your dad and he agrees. You’re safer with the pack for now, where we can see you. You’re staying with me.’


	8. I Will Weep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There be a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this has taken sooo long to deliver, so massive sorry for the wait, but trust me, its the only thing I've been doing in my spare time! Maybe to manage expectations, if the chapters are longer, they will take a few weeks to upload. Don't worry though, I'm working through it. I'm just enjoying this story so much! :)
> 
> As always, not beta-read, any feedback is massively welcome!

‘Who’s fucking idea was it,’ Stiles hisses as his limp legs trail behind him, ‘To move the cripple onto the top floor of a fucking tower?’

Derek just grunts. Perhaps he has learned that, recent events considered, he is best keeping ideas to himself. But no; this would be a vain hope. Though he liked to silently brood, he also liked to tell everyone what to do. Perhaps he cannot help it? It’s in the alpha blood. It’s his nature.

‘What the fuck is that?’ There is an unidentifiable darkness on the floor that his legs draw over. ‘Next time, steer me out of the way of something like that.’

For a landlord, Derek did little to invest in his building. There was a justice being exacted now, because the lift had jarred at the second floor and Derek had been forced to carry him all the way over his shoulders. He had begun the journey nobly, but for some reason had become more irritable after every floor.

‘Why haven’t you put some carpets down? Or even some panelling? And there’s damp. There. There. There’s some there too. Damp is bad you know – if you want to sell later, because it could be damaging the structure itself and that might put off future buyers. Besides, it’s really not good for your health, you know. Fuck. What was that? Was that a bird? Have you got fucking pigeons in here?’

None of his questions are answered, and the alpha is particularly unresponsive when Stiles remembers he’s left his crutches in the ground floor lobby. He doesn’t have time to realise he is being abandoned until he notices he is alone and propped on a sofa. He has been to Derek’s loft before, but he does not remember something so hospitable as a sofa. It must be new, though by how scratched and faded it is, new is not the correct word.

He looks around, thinks to himself, yes, this is the same loft. It is empty. It lacks a skin; it has no front door, only an elevator. If it was a nest, it is cold and empty, and the chicks have perished long ago. Derek, like a parasite, has come across it and somehow managed to make it colder, emptier, more dead.

But then he sees things scattered about, perhaps unintentionally; things that Derek was unlikely to possess for himself.

Poking above the lips of a tin bucket, Stiles sees the spines of several books, piled high within their container to keep them dry and unmuddied. One of them is not as faded and damaged, and he can see _Paradise Lost_ written into its spine.

There are dirty dishes in the sink in the kitchen, but that there are too many dishes overall for one person, no matter how much Derek eats.

There are more doors in the loft, too, more than there had been before. Once, there were only open passageways, and like teeth, there were rusted hinges hanging like weaponised baubles, waiting to snag on clothing or even skin. Now there are doors, and on one of them hangs a scarf.

A bag—a woman’s—cast haphazardly and bulbous.

A lacrosse stick, on which a jumper is hanging.

A wrinkled and water-stained deck of cards, which has almost certainly become an incomplete set.

They are spread about the room, these reminders. These acknowledgements that Derek’s loft is not _just_ Derek’s loft anymore.

When the alpha eventually returns with the crutches tucked under his arm, it is with the noise of the elevator. Somehow the werewolf has got it working again. Stiles asks him where his stuff is.

‘In your room.’

‘I have a room?’

‘You’re not sleeping with me.’

‘How kind of you to point that out, but what I was really trying to say is where is that room exactly?’

‘Try harder.’ But instead Derek picks him up from the sofa and the suddenness of the act causes Stiles to yelp.

‘Did I hurt you?’

‘Yes,’ Stiles lies, ‘But I’ll survive.’

Derek shoves one of the doors open with his foot. The room is not like the rest of the loft—it is more finished and has been decorated to make it slightly more comfortable. There is a double bed, a washbasin, a wardrobe. His bags are not here. They have already been emptied and the room has been furnished with his belongings. ‘Who’s been through my stuff. Not cool, man.’

‘Don’t worry, we put the gay porn you were hiding in the trash.’ 

Stiles tenses.

He knows it is a joke almost immediately; he knows he doesn’t own, at least in physical form, any gay porn. The world was digitalised—print…journalism…was dying. The age of the porn mag was dead. But it takes him a moment to realise this. It takes a sharp intake of breath to realise that it was joke.

It was a joke, and only a joke. 

That particular skeleton was still piled in his cupboard. He chews his lips and scowls at the werewolf, acutely aware his heart is now racing. ‘Were you disappointed there weren’t any pictures of you?’

‘We found those too, but we put them in your bedside drawer, second from the top.’

‘Very funny—wait, _we_?’ Derek props him into a sitting position on the bed. ‘The pack—’ He stands back, stiffens a little, ‘—Well, what’s left of us anyway. We moved the stuff your dad gave us. You should call him, by the way.’

‘I know,’ Stiles bites. ‘I know, thank you.’ He challenges the alpha with his eyes, lets them communicate his disdain, his anger, all of it bottled up.

He resents Derek’s ideas. He should keep them to himself. He thinks, recently, these plans have been disasters. And it is impossible to not let the resentment spill over into resentment for the one who comes up with them. But this plan: to keep Stiles under the watchful eyes of the pack, was probably a sensible one. It was better than staying with dad and putting him in danger.

It is easy, this dissonance. To accept the truth, even respect it, and yet hate it all the same. He wants nothing more than to be home, to be with his dad. 

‘You should talk to Lydia and Scott, too.’

‘I know,’ Stiles bites again, all the more disdainful, ‘So this is the new base of operations then – the last bastion of supernatural in Beacon Hills?’

‘Bastion?’

‘It’s a type of fortress—’

‘I know what the word means. This isn’t a fortress.’

Stiles is picking at his fingers.

‘Where are the others?’ He says finally, not looking up.

‘They’re getting food. They should be back soon. Also, Deaton’s coming.’

Stiles is looking at his feet. Hopefully this will not involve answering questions.

‘So…’ Stiles is looking anywhere other than Derek. The alpha, however, looks directly at him. He can feel the penetrating stare, the hint of annoyance at the disturbance of the peace in this once silent apartment. ‘So what?’ Derek growls.

‘Are we just going to sit here, without saying anything?’

‘Do we have to talk, just for the sake of talking?’

‘Talking isn’t something that’s supposed to be painful, you know.’

‘Neither is not talking, but it seems to torture you.’

‘Why are you determined to make everyone around you miserable?’

‘I’m sorry if carrying you around all day and giving you a room has made you miserable.’

‘Yes, you’re right! I’m so ungrateful, what this being everything I’ve ever wanted. To be broken and forbidden from going to home.’ 

They have reached their crescendo and at its end the moment snaps, like a knot unravelling into taught rope. Now, Stiles thinks, perhaps silence is better after all.

The elevator is making a noise, rumbling and groaning metallically. It is a mercy for them. They make their way to the main room of the loft, Stiles giving Derek a hiss when he moves to carry him out of the bedroom. ‘I can manage,’ he bites.

Deaton is coming from the elevator; he has his own key to building because he is pack, because, despite what Derek thinks, this is the last bastion in Beacon Hills.

They find each other in main room of the loft and gravitate to the sofas there.

‘Ah,’ the druid says, seeing Stiles, ‘Just the person I wanted to see. You are feeling better?’ He doesn’t wait for a reply, however, because he already knows the answer. Stiles doesn’t take it personally. 

He sits down on a stool he’s pulled out, indicating to the vacant sofa space opposite him, then he is wringing his hands and checking his coat pockets. ‘I’m sorry that we’re meeting this way, but I’m here because of work,’ Deaton continues. There is a pace to him that is unusual; it’s like he rushing to be somewhere, to sort something out. He is uncharacteristically agitated.

Eventually, Stiles sits on the sofa after struggling with his crutches. Opposite Deaton, he feels like this is an interview.

‘Stiles, I just want to ask you a few questions—don’t worry, nothing you can’t answer. Trust me, please, I won’t force you to answer anything you don’t want to.’

Slowly, fearfully, Stiles nods. Deaton oats through his coat pockets again, until he finds his phone. He inputs the code, though he leans back, squinting, and presses the touchscreen with a single clumsy finger. ‘I hate these things,’ he is saying when he finally gets the screen he wants, ‘What’s wrong with polaroid?’ 

Stiles feels the cushions dip when Derek sits next to him, then Deaton turns the screen round and he sees women laughing. They are middle-aged, in each other’s arms, holding drinks. They are in a bar somewhere, a fancy place. The image is slightly blurred, the taker has caught the edge of their finger in the frame.

‘Do you recognise her?’ Deaton asks, pointing at one them. The woman is wearing floral trousers and a yellow blouse; she has dark drink, perhaps a rum with coke, and her eyes are bright with slight intoxication. She is laughing more boisterously than the rest. There is a ring on her fourth finger.

‘No,’ he answers.

The druid doesn’t wait to explain. He turns the phone back and swipes, then he returns it again to face Stiles. ‘Do you recognise him?’

An old man with a young girl in his arms. They are smiling in a garden somewhere. It is sunny and there is sunburn on the girl’s nose.

‘No,’ he answers again, confused. Deaton repeats the process. ‘Her?’

A selfie of a teenage girl with pink hair. She has rings in her nose and ears, and on her arms there are sleeves of tattoos.

‘Yes…that’s Mia. She went to our school.’ She’d always been rebel; that was her crowd. She never shied from speaking her mind. To everyone she was confident, she liked to fight assholes, people like Jackson whenever they said something stupid or controversial. It had taken the neighbourhood by surprise when she killed herself a few months ago.

‘You recognise her only from school, not from anywhere else?’

‘No, just from school. I didn’t know her very well. Deaton, why—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he sighs with relief. After each photo, his agitation has eased. He is not fidgeting as much and there is relief in his eyes. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘last one. ‘Do you recognise him?’

When Deaton turns the phone, Stiles suddenly stops breathing. He cannot help cowering from the picture because it is involuntary, it is coded into him like a computer.

Derek grabs his shoulder with a firm grip.

When he comes around from the shock, he looks back to Deaton, who has put the phone away in his pocket. They exchange glances. The druid’s face is marked with concern again, more burdensome than before. He doesn’t say anything.

‘Deaton—tell me what you know. Don’t hide anything. Who is he? What happened to him?’

The druid looks for a moment like he won’t tell him; that’s his way, after all, to stay mysterious, to never say anything he didn’t have to. But right now, he’s weighed it up and decided to answer.

‘His name was Algernon Alfred Peterson, but he always went by Alfie, because he hated his first name—he was bullied because of it at school. He was nineteen years old, worked at a book store on Gambit Street. He wasn’t a very sociable person. Loved birdwatching. He died about three months ago when a girl he liked was being catcalled. He made a stand, got a single punch, hit the curb, and died.’

Stiles thinks he has heard this, a while ago, about someone arrested for manslaughter. He heard it in the news. He hadn’t noticed it though, because there was never any good news, and this was just another story of many bad stories in America.

‘The other people…they’re all dead too? That’s the connection between them all?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why were you asking me about dead people? How did you manage to find…to find _him_?

Deaton is quiet for a long time.

‘These were people who all died around the time you were taken. They all died painfully. I searched for these people because whatever this is, that’s playing with us, it is deeply connected to death and to pain.’

Stiles swallows. He is startled when Derek asks, ‘Is it a demon, then? Or a possessing spirit?’

Deaton is hesitant, but eventually he shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think so because demons do not act this way. They play games, of course, but they are never patient. Its plan would have been to kill us all on the night Stiles was taken. A spirit? No. Beacon Hills is emptying, anyone supernatural is packing and leaving. A spirit cannot possess the power to cause that.’

‘But if even we don’t know what we’re facing, how can others know they need to leave Beacon Hills? How do they know what they’re running from? How do they know how powerful it is?’

The faces of Deacon and Derek answer him.

You do not need to know what it is that you are running from, when you just _feel_ the power it holds within its jaws, the same jaws snapping dangerously at your heels. It is like the dream he has had, wolves racing passed him from one hill and over the next; it is instinct within them all, to run from something so starved, so hungry, so capable of feasting.

They must run. 

Except Stiles can’t run. He must walk on, towards the epicentre, to the place that it is wailing and waiting. He realises suddenly, with horror, that his friends—Scott, Lydia, Malia, Kira, Cora, Deaton…Derek…they will follow him too, even if it feeds on them all.

‘It is not a spirit,’ Deaton continues. ‘What took you had a form, though you cannot tell us anything or answer any questions, but now I know the form it took was Algernon Alfred Peterson. He was not possessed because he was already dead and buried. Therefore, it must have taken on his form after his death. There are many things that can do this, some of them we can defeat. No, it is something else that concerns me.’

‘What?’

‘There was nothing supernatural about this young man. There was nothing supernatural about his life, and nothing supernatural in his death. He had been dead for some time before you saw his form, Stiles. There is no connecting supernatural link between the death of this young man and you. None that are obvious to me. It would take great power to assume the form of something you have not touched or come into contact with. Besides…we all _feel_ the power. It is in the bottom of my heart, like dread, same as it is for you, Derek, and for you, Stiles. It takes a power of…great magnitude to do that for a place the size of Beacon Hills, and the areas surrounding it.’

Stiles weighs Deaton’s words. He is trying to measure how much information the druid has left out, how much more he knows but won’t say. All Stiles wants is a name—something to call the thing that is playing with him. With a name, he would feel better. Namelessness is terror.

‘I have more to think about and to investigate. I’ll leave you for now.’

They let him rise, too lost in thought and fear to make pleasantries. When the druid makes his way out, he knocks over a bucket and there is a tumbling of different objects that had been stacked inside. Deaton moves to pick up the mess, but when he bends down, he stops.

‘It’s alright, I’ll clear it,’ Derek says, moving to the mess. He holds back when he sees Deaton unmoving. ‘You alright?’

‘…Yes, just a…well…it doesn’t matter. Sorry, I must leave.’ He is disappearing into the elevator and then he is receding with the rumbling and groaning of iron.

‘What was that about?’ Stiles asks from the sofa.

‘I don’t know,’ the alpha grunts, shoving the books back into their tin bucket.

* * *

They haven’t spoken much, the pack.

They are having a Chinese takeout, but most of them are wrapping the noodles around their forks, playing with the knots and curls, stirring aimlessly and not eating. Stiles is on the sofa, stretched out so that his legs don’t pain him unnecessarily, the crutches propped on the armrest by his head, and the others are in chairs or makeshift seats; an upturned crate, a stack of pillows, a pile of books pulled from a tin bucket. Malia, Cora, Kira, Lydia, Scott, Derek.

Fewer, every time they meet.

They haven’t got chairs, but they are all imagining it, feeling it, the empty spaces between them where more of their friends should be sitting, eating, and laughing. These ghosts prevent each of them looking at each other too long, saying anything too spirited. It is an oppressive feeling, one that overrides all their senses and impulses. It is like a barrier in the mind that blocks anything resembling a joke or a pleasant memory. For some, it makes them unnaturally quiet. For others…they embrace the melancholy. They were born to brood.

But Stiles fights the oppression relentlessly. He has sat in a hospital bed, silent, and looking absently at the same place in the flooring where a dead fly had landed; he wouldn’t stay that way, not if he wished to get through this, and so he speaks, and he says anything that comes to mind to remove the silence.

‘When I was a kid, once I ate a chow mein and got sick, and when it all came up, it looked like a pile of worms.’ 

Malia is looking at him as if to say: _what the hell is wrong with you?_

‘Well, okay maybe not worms—I didn’t have worms, if I didn’t make that clear…okay to me it looked more like spaghetti—’

‘Stiles…’

‘—Not that I think there’s anything wrong with people who have worms—well, except that they have worms…okay, let me start again—’

He is silenced by a collective and loud, ‘No!’

But when Lydia returns to her food, she spins her fork once and then begins giggling. It is a discord in the moment. She is now laughing, and Kira has joined her. Forks are dropping everywhere in acknowledgement of the fact that no-one wishes to continue eating now. Before long they are all in hysterics, everyone except Derek, of course. Stiles raises himself a little, confused.

‘What? What’s the joke?’

Cora waves a hand at him, as if to tell him he must stop else she’ll die from the lack of breaths she has taken. The girls are grasping at their sides, whilst Scott is trying all he can to stop his smirk from bursting into laughs.

‘What? What is it?’

‘They’re laughing at you,’ Derek says casually, the only one continuing to eat.

‘No…No…we’re not laughing _at_ you.’

‘What _are_ you laughing at?’

He doesn’t need an answer because suddenly he understands, and he is laughing too. Laughing uncontrollably, ashamedly, laughing in spite of everything and everyone, laughing against himself, through himself, _at_ himself.

It is like one of those freak events he’d learned from some videos on the internet or maybe in history class: when suddenly all the village begins dancing, on their feet until they drop dead. It is like one of those weird conferences where cultists sing hymns, all begin speaking in tongues, claiming they can now suddenly see, suddenly stand, suddenly believe.

It is a hysteria that infects them, bubbling and rising in their stomachs and chests until they feel they cannot breath, and they don’t know why, or where this energy has come from.

But it is a dangerous thing.

One moment he is laughing, then he is realising Lydia is not. Somewhere in mere moments she has transitioned into weeping. It is dry to begin with, and before any of the pack can see her tears, or even move to stop her, she is at her feet and running out, into her own room. 

They all become deathly silent, and they are left to reflect on this momentary madness in that deep oppressive silence.

He sees pale faces, stoic and paralysed. They are all asking themselves what the fuck has just happened.

_What the fuck just happened?_

Scott is rising to follow her, but Stiles sticks out a crutch so that it brushes his shin. 

‘No, I’ll go.’ His best friend sits down again awkwardly. They watch him struggle to get up and hobble towards the door she has escaped through. Derek is scratching the back of his head, looking at the floor, whilst Malia is turning her fork in noodles, just like before.

He finds her, arm outstretched against a wall, the other holding her side as if it is containing pain. Her shoulders gyrate with every heavy breath, unsteady and faltering. She is concentrating on breathing, and she has not noticed him. 

He notices her bedroom is decorated; there are fairy lights and pictures stuck to the raw brick walls. There’s a bed, a wardrobe, a sink; there’s extra blankets on the bed and makeup of every kind crowded upon a desk.

Somehow, she has managed to make a cold and empty place homely. It smells nice, it looks inviting.

When the door shuts behind him, when the first steps of his crutches pass across the floor, she looks up at him with watery eyes.

‘I know, I know,’ she is saying. He keeps hobbling toward her. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I just need to get together, okay?’

When he gets to her, he drops his crutches and wraps his arms around her. He intends to embrace her, but the loss of support causes him to put his weight into her shoulders and cling. She slowly brings them both to the floor because she cannot hold the weight of him, and though there is pain as his legs fold, he is too tightly holding her to notice.

He can smell her hair, feel her chest shivering, hear her ruptured breathes. 

They sit, crumpled, for an eternity.

‘Do you remember the times when we thought we were invincible, Stiles? Do you remember when we hadn’t lost anyone, when we didn’t have to sit remembering them? I know it’s stupid, but I once felt like we were untouchables. Like God himself couldn’t kill us. And now…now we are _exposed_. We’re mortal again. Do you remember the times, Stiles?’

‘No.’

Lydia bites back a laugh. ‘Yes, you were always a step ahead of us, weren’t you?’

‘A step? Lydia, I was so far ahead even the werewolves couldn’t catch up.’

‘Don’t be so arrogant,’ she says, half laughing, half crying. ‘No seriously,’ he continues, ‘I’m starting to think I’m not just a normal boring human after all. Maybe I’m some sort of wizard?’

‘A wizard?’

‘Or warlock, or whatever, and not in the way that a cultist is a warlock. You know, something magical, sexy, and super intelligent.’

‘I don’t think I’ve heard something so ridiculous.’

‘Ouch, hey now, I’m sure it’s possible.’ He smiles at her laughter; if there weren’t still tears on her cheeks, you could almost think she is happy, crying happy. She hugs him tightly, ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you, Stiles. Never change.’

‘Look, you know…about what I said in the hospital—’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘But—’

‘It _doesn’t_ matter,’ she replies, more sternly. He doesn’t say anything more because she is right. It really didn’t matter.

* * *

When he is on his crutches, heading to his bedroom, he spots Derek on the sofa, arm outstretched, and fingers curled in the fibres of an abandoned coat. Erica’s coat. It is as if he is watching TV and stroking a pet by his side. Except there is no TV and there is no pet.

‘Derek?’

‘Hm?’

‘What’re you doin’?’ The alpha looks at him strangely, then scowls.

‘Bedtime, Stiles.’

But Stiles does not go to bed. He clumsily sits beside Derek, making as much fuss and trouble as possible. The werewolf moves to increase the space between them and scowls all the while.

‘What about you?’

‘Huh?’

‘Aren’t you going to bed?’

‘Can’t sleep.’

Stiles understands that Derek is a werewolf of few words, so he sits quietly, picking at the fabric of his clothes. By his side, Derek’s fingers begin to move again against the coat.

‘Sorry about earlier today. I know I talk a lot, and it can be annoying for you. I suppose we’re just different people, but we should still act like adults around each other, so I guess I’m saying, you know, sorry.’ Derek pulls a face. Stiles almost thinks there is a small amount of regret in it.

‘No, Stiles. I…well I guess I was tired. You are very annoying, though.’

‘Thanks, but seriously, sorry. And thanks for carrying me, and for getting my crutches.’ The alpha mumbles something about it being no problem, then he adds, as an after-thought, ‘I just…snap sometimes.’ Stiles nods; it is the closest to an apology he’ll get.

You see, Stiles doesn’t always mind silence. He’s not someone who has to compulsively fill it with small talk or jokes that aren’t funny. He’s comfortable _with_ silence. But why be silent when you could say something? Besides, when you say something, often other people say something back. You can learn things you didn’t know before. Silence…it tells you nothing.

After a while, he thinks this is the best time to ask a question, because the wolf isn’t likely to snap just after their little heart-to-heart. He places his question gently, but in a serious voice.

‘What does it feel like…to be an alpha?’

Derek’s fingers cease moving and the werewolf pauses between inhaling and exhaling.

‘Some feelings depend on the day, Stiles. Some feelings are the same no matter when.’ He, Stiles, does not interrupt this thought. He is relieved when Derek elaborates on it. ‘Always: responsible. Sometimes: fearful. Always: present. Sometimes: weak.’ He rubs his hand through the coat. ‘Always: defensive.’ He makes a small growl, ‘Sometimes: rage.’

He looks directly at Stiles.

‘Always: possessive.’

Stiles swallows.

‘Sometimes I feel it like an animal, like I cannot think of anything else, like all reason has left me. _My_ pack. _My_ friends. Sometimes I get so angry, I can’t think; every fear, everything I should be cautious about: it doesn’t matter. Reason has no sense to me.’

‘Does that worry you?’ Stiles asks. Derek’s eyes narrow.

‘No. Should it?’

‘I don’t know. Seems like you could make a mistake. What if you did? What if you have already?’

Derek softens. He understands what Stiles is saying, but he always knows better.

‘You haven’t seen me, not like that. I’ve made many mistakes, but never when I feel that way about someone; when my eyes change and the only thing I can taste is blood in my mouth, or feel it running down my claws…when I feel all that, I know whatever I do will be the right decision. That rage-state never left me with regrets. I do have regrets, though. Too many—you wouldn’t believe me…’

‘I believe you,’ Stiles answers truthfully.

‘And you?’ The alpha asks. ‘What does it feel like, to be human?’

Stiles chews upon his answer.

‘Always: like I am the last leg of BBQ chicken in the take-out box. Sometimes: I think I enjoy it.’ He winks. Then he stammers immediately, and can’t help adding, ‘I don’t read gay porn by the way. It was just a joke: don’t get any ideas.’

It is the only occasion that Derek has so much as chuckled at a joke of his, and it leaves Stiles jaw hanging. ‘What? You can actually find something funny?’

Derek shakes his head, his shoulders gently shaking with the dying ripples of his laugh. ‘It’s just…that’s what you do Stiles. It’s why you’re the heart of the pack, why everyone loves you. You have every reason to be as miserable as the rest of us, God knows you feel it inside. Yet…you choose to make us laugh instead, no matter what. I could never be like you. I could only ever be the opposite. You were right: I make everyone around me miserable.’

Then Stiles feels something, a thing that is _outside_ of himself. It closes around him like the wings of a predator, like a thick black cloak, a swift shadow, the envelopment of night. He is seized with a sudden terror, but it is not his overwhelming sensation.

Overwhelming, flooding, capsizing, is the feeling, as if he has found the last flower of Autumn, wilted and dying in the boughs of a bloody tree stump. The forest is silent, the only eyes within it are aimless and vacant.

He realises he is suddenly crying, weeping, into his alpha’s broad shoulder. He is struggling to breathe because of his weeping, unsteady and shaking. His nose leaves a mess upon the werewolf’s clothes.

He thinks to himself: this is what happened to Lydia earlier.

Then there is a large hand, stroking the back of his head. The same hand that not moments earlier was brushing through the fibres of a coat bereft of its owner.

Stiles is not used to feelings like these seizing him. He doesn’t feel like someone who is particularly self-controlled or emotionally detached, but neither was he prone to outbursts of emotion like this. And yet…the feeling of lacking control grows. It is as if he has taken what Derek had told him moments ago; about forgetting the rational; about forgetting to reason; about throwing caution into the emotional wind, and he has decided to try it for himself.

When his head dips and falls from its support on Derek’s shoulder, he knows the werewolf’s follows him, and whilst the other man’s head comes down to his own, he suddenly surges, lifts upwards.

It is a feeling that comes from _outside_, that makes him move this way. He would never have thought to do it otherwise.

His lips meet the alpha’s; they are slightly parted, unsuspecting. He feels the brush of stubble as their skin meets and brushes against each other. He feels the heat of living breath in his mouth and the wetness of another’s lips. But he does not feel those lips move or follow him.

Kissing, Stiles thinks absently, should be like dancing: it should be with a partner who is also dancing, with a partner who reacts, changes and moves as the music changes, as their partner moves. Partners who are dancing are in union; they are in sync.

Right now, Stiles feels like he is dancing alone against a partner who is rigid. The image in his head gives to sensation, and the sensation makes him realise how foolish he must look. It makes him realise what he is actually doing.

He pulls away, flushed and feeling the red heat bloom across his face. He can see Derek, paralysed with the same expression he must have had before the kiss.

They are staring at one another, waiting, hoping? The next move needs to be made by someone, something else. But nothing comes to save them. They are still staring at one another.

‘I…Look, Derek…I—’

‘I should go to bed, it’s getting late.’

‘Oh? Yeah, I understand.’

‘Get some sleep, Stiles.’

When Derek has padded away and clicked a door shut, Stiles claws at his face and asks himself how he could have been so much of an idiot. He is left thinking that something was not right; that this thing, this _outside_ feeling, present at the back of his mind was not right.

He thinks in flurry of thoughts: how will this all play out now, living with Derek? Will he tell other pack-mates? Worse, what will he tell himself? What, exactly, does Derek think of him now? What the fuck will happen? Will it change things? As things hadn’t changed enough…

Then he turns the questions to himself. 

Why? He is your alpha, he is your friend-enemy. He doesn’t like you and, recently, you don’t like him. He does not trust you; he has made terrible, terrible mistakes. You have not forgiven him, and because of him you cannot forgive yourself. The timing is wrong. Not just wrong, but fucked up. Why, Stiles? Why?

Because…because of that _outside_ feeling. That feeling he cannot name, and in namelessness becomes terror.


	9. I Will Always Regret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always sorry for the amount of time it has taken to post, sorry folks. Hopefully what I've actually written makes the wait worth it.
> 
> And of course I've started quoting Milton.
> 
> Not beta-read, so please let me know of any mistakes.

Scott is walking on a path he cannot leave. This time, it is a hallway painted with blood. It is dark and many things are scratching behind the plasterwork. The lights above are flickering with a weak electrical charge.

If he turns, so much as try, the effort becomes too exhausting for him. Shifting to change direction is like gripping something that always leaves his hands: it is impossible to achieve, and the more he concentrates on doing it, the more it slips from his fingers.

So on he walks, taken by a strange and terrifying magnetic force, down a hallway, a path he knows he should not tread.

His centre of gravity shifts; to the left he feels his weight suddenly fall and then, like the arc of a returning pendulum he feels it on his right. He is stumbling like a drunk werewolf, as impossible as it seems.

‘You did this to me!’ He hears the voices breathed, hissed against the bloody walls.

‘You did this to me!’

‘You did this to me!’

‘_You did this to me!_’

Then he sees it, at the corridor’s end.

There is a figure, a familiar, welcome scent.

Behind the figure is a door and there is bright light creeping below its foot.

This figure, he realises as he approaches, is Stiles. There is an expression in his face, a look which says—

* * *

He throws himself from his bed. He is upright. He is breathing heavily; like dew, sweat covers him and he can feel the droplets snaking their way across his skin and down his sides.

The nightmares keep coming.

They have visited him every night, in multitude forms, and they have terrorised him into fearful wakefulness, into the dark disorientation of his room in Derek’s loft. He realises, each night, he has torn through his bedsheets, carved deep into the mattress with his claws. He has nearly cut his own thighs; there are light scratches where they have brushed passed his damp goose bumped skin.

He checks the room over, searches for the figure.

Once or twice, he has thought he has woken from the nightmare, but then finds a face staring at him in the shadows, with red eyes and a melting face. It surprises him, jumps out at him. Then he wakes for real.

Tonight, it is not here. He is truly awake. He thinks.

There is light creeping under his door. He thinks it is a good idea to make a drink, distract himself for a while. There is little point in trying to sleep again now. He gets out of bed, doesn’t even bother putting on a top.

In the main room of the loft, Stiles is sitting on the sofa, staring. It makes Scott rear back, suddenly panicked. If it’s still possible, he could turn back to his room, but he doesn’t want that either.

He is stuck between an anvil and a hammer. Then he thinks of the melting face, the bloody corridor, the voices screaming through the bricks, and he realises he does not want to go back into his room. Not yet.

‘...Stiles?’

His friend jerks his head with surprise.

‘Oh, sorry. How long have you been there?’

‘Just came in. You?’

‘Been here a while now.’

‘Hey, you want a drink?’ Scott makes his way to the kitchen, pulls out two glasses when Stiles asks for water. When he brings them over, he sits next to him.

Scott cannot stop thinking of these nightmares, but no matter what, he hasn’t told anyone about them. They are building up inside him; they are forming a pile of horror, disgust, guilt, and regret, and now this pile is pushing against the ceiling. He thinks he should tell Deaton about them, when he next sees the druid, but then he realises this could be days, even more than a week away. He could tell Lydia, Malia, Kira, or anyone.

Anyone but Stiles.

‘I had a nightmare,’ Scott whispers, surprising himself with the words. It is like the impulsion has come from _outside_ himself.

‘Yeah? What kind?’

Scott swallows hard, takes a sip of water. ‘I don’t...I don’t think I should tell you...We need to talk about a lot of other things.’

‘I know,’ Stiles says, matter of fact. ‘But you can tell me this first. I want to know.’ 

Scott nods, because he knows there’s nothing he can do to stop Stiles. He’s never been able to refuse him. Stiles has a way of making him do things he wouldn’t otherwise do.

‘I’ve…had this nightmare more than once, but there are others. It starts differently, some of the details, the settings change. But the story, the ending: it always stays the same. I’m walking towards something. I don’t know what it is when I walk, but I just keep going. When I try to turn around or change direction, it’s like I become exhausted: like defying gravity or swimming upstream or something like that, I don’t know. Eventually, I see you. You are facing me, and I’m facing you. And...and that’s where it ends.’

‘No it’s not,’ Stiles says blankly.

‘It is.’

‘Scott, you just told me it was a nightmare and you look like you’ve ran a marathon after getting out of bed.’

‘It’s not what’s in the dream that makes it...it’s how I feel when I’m in it, the places—’

‘You’re lying to me, Scott.’

Scott bites his lips. He’s caught. He’s always caught by Stiles. But why has he brought up this conversation? Why has he forced himself into this corner?

‘Go on,’ Stiles encourages.

He feels the ceiling crack, the dust falling from the creases. He has built up these feelings, these terrors and never told anyone. Now, he is telling the one person he hoped to keep them a secret from.

‘When we are facing each other...I pull my claws out. You...you just stand there, like you’re confused.’

He is beginning to feel the tears roll down his cheeks. He used to cry when he thought of Allison. Now they come from too many memories or experiences and he is worried that soon they will dry up, that one day, they won’t come anymore because he feels nothing inside.

‘Then I run for you…I rip out your throat…I taste your…blood...look you get the idea,’ he finishes, shivering. Then he becomes earnest. ‘Stiles, I’d never hurt you, you know that? I’ve made mistakes, I’ve done stupid things, but I’d never do anything to hurt you. I...I love you.’

He can see Stiles swallow a croak. 

‘I know. I know. I love you too, man. I love you too. Look,’ he turns over, ‘I have nightmares too. We all have nightmares—’

‘But not like these Stiles. I kill you, in the dreams. I would never do that, but in the dreams, it’s like I have to, it’s like it’s do or die.’

‘I know—’

‘Why am I having these dreams? Why would my mind even think of this? It’s sick. It’s _wrong_. Where have they come from? I’ve never dreamed like this before—’

‘Scott!’ Stiles is shaking him, then he is embracing him.

‘Scott, I know. I have the same nightmares as you. They’re just the other way around. I have a knife coated in wolfsbane. It’s not you, Scott. It’s not you.’

‘How…How do you know? How can you be so sure of yourself? It all seems so real, like it’s really me…’

‘I know because this isn’t us, Scott. This isn’t what _we_ are, what we do. Don’t doubt yourself. Know yourself, now more than ever. You’re not the wolf in your dreams. You’d never do the things that wolf does.’

He is nodding. Scott understands. He knows what Stiles says is true. He likes to be reassured by Stiles, because he always tells him straight, even if sometimes he had ulterior motives, some desire for mischief.

Stiles always had Scott’s back, and if there was something really worth worrying about, Stiles would tell him.

Stiles had…had been there in the worst moments of his life. He had been there to yank at his collar and drag him from that pitch-black hole of misery. Stiles had been the person to sacrifice all his energy to keep him afloat. People don’t realise what consoling is; they don’t realise how much energy it takes. It’s like having a child, thinks Scott. People think that they can tap someone on the shoulder, crack a joke, be a friend to cry on. That they can pepper someone with reassurances and happy memories and then congratulate themselves on being a good friend, on being a bedrock.

They don’t realise it’s so much more than that. So much more exhausting. The nights that breach the mornings, where you keep talking in circles from misery to hope to hopeless to misery. Even the slightest respite is pulling at the hook and you spend your hours, completely depleted with fatigue in the effort to reel it back out. 

It takes patience, like no other. He is genuinely surprised that Stiles never hit him, though he sure the thought crossed his friend’s mind many times. Every time _she_…Allison resurfaced from his memories, they were back to square one. Not like the films; she didn’t die in one scene, Scott mourning in the next, then a crisp, hopeful dawn for the epilogue. He realises now the pain is not supposed to go away. It’s just a dull feeling that always accompanies him, and once in a while, it shoots up through his body and paralyses him.

Stiles had, for so many months, made it possible to live with this pain. Before then, he was sure it would kill him. 

And for Stiles, it must have taken a willingness for self-sacrifice. Like poison, Scott’s mourning had made Stiles unhappy, too, he had noticed, even if Stiles had tried his best to hide it. If Stiles only knew the sacrifices he’d made for his best friend…

…would he do it all again, given the choice?

He doesn’t know the answer. He doesn’t want to know the answer.

It’s only after he sipped some more water that he realises how late it is, and he realises how strange it is for Stiles to even be awake, sitting alone on the sofa. ‘Did you have a nightmare tonight?’ He asks gently.

His best friends face moves almost imperceptibly, then after a while he answers with a strained voice. ‘Yes. But you should get some sleep. I’m going to bed soon, anyway.’

Scott doesn’t want to leave, but he gets the strange feeling he should. He rises awkwardly, moves to the door of his room, to the darkness, to worry and restlessness. Stiles calls him back.

‘Scott…about what I said…at the hospital…’

He turns around, looks Stiles in the eyes and makes a wry smile.

They don’t say anything more. It really didn’t matter.

* * *

He is twice the speed limit, he knows.

Against his helmet he can feel the whirling air and he can see the blinking of the streetlights as he roars down the road. One by one they flash dangerously. Under the wheels of his Yahama, the paintwork in the tarmac has ceased flashing like Morse code, has now blurred into single lines and indistinct patterns.

He has to go faster. He cannot be late, not even for a second.

He presses his foot further against the pedal, further than he has ever dared before, and as soon as he feels the roar between his feet and the acceleration against his body, his adrenaline surges to meet it. He has never taken risks like this before, never stepped a toe out of line.

Because tonight is different, and he cannot be late for it.

The next ten miles to Beacon Hills Infirmary pass like they are lost in a stroke. He is taking the exit at the freeway, navigating the smaller country roads in search for the shortcut that he knows is somewhere through the forest.

He doesn’t normally take risks.

He lessens his grip a little on the accelerator and he is agitated when he feels his speed slow. He thinks: I’m going too slow. I’m going to be late. Oh God, what if I’m late?

His fingers climb the handle and uneasily stroke them.

Like the streetlights and the paintwork, the trees blur. He cannot see them individually, but as an illuminated pallet of greens and browns, but if he looks straight ahead, further down the dark road, it is easier to see the stretch of deep vegetation. Something flashes on his right side.

He sees it far ahead—a mass of brown fur. He guesses roadkill, but it’s quite large. Probably a deer, rotting and mangled and covered in flies. One moment it is in the distance, the next it has flown passed him.

Then he sees another object in the distance.

It is strange, for it to be so far ahead and yet so unavoidable.

He sees the truck. It is dark red, with black writing. He does not have time to recognise what it says. The cab has pulled out from a darkened road; it has misjudged the narrow lane and been unable to turn and the wagon blocks the road like a wall.

He registers what he sees, notes that it is far away.

But now it is so close. Time has slowed in the approach, but he has been unable to do anything. All can think is, ‘Oh?’

Then he is weightless. He is flying like a crow, above the trees, through their branches. He feels his wings snap in different places. Then his legs are broken and shatter. His ribs are cracking and the air is erupting from his mouth in a flood of liquid.

He is collapsing in on himself.

He thinks he is still moving, but now the ground is solid and is laid out before him. It is muddy and covered in branches and leaves. There are the boughs of a tree where his limbs are contorted at strange angles that cannot possibly make sense.

He tries to scream out his agony, but only vomit and blood comes out. He tries to turn his head from the mess, or else he’ll drown in it, but he feels too heavy. He manages to move a fraction before the pain explodes in every inch of his being.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the figure waving a torch. He thinks it must be the truck driver, but then he realises the figure is too small for an adult.

Yes...it is a child. They playfully skip over roots as they approach him, as if they are telling themselves: don’t step on this root, or you’ll break your mother’s back! And her wings! And her legs! Break! Break! Break! Snap! Snap! Snap!

But then he sees.

He sees it’s bloody eyes and its mouth hanging in a hideous scream that he cannot hear. His ears only ring with pain.

It is making the noises he wishes to make himself, no doubt. A cry of agony, of hateful surprise, the sound so loud it could shatter glass and ring bells.

The child extends its arms, reaching. It is vainly trying to grasp him, but a dark hand pulls upon its shoulder, stops it, holds it back.

The world is shrinking, enveloped in a shadow that draws across the corners of his eyes. He is dying, he realises, and with the revelation arrives terror. The pain may have subsided, but regret and fear remain.

How will I see her? He thinks.

_I’m going to be late...I’m going to be so..._

* * *

‘I felt it,’ answers Deaton, wrapping his coat further around himself. ‘This is an opportunity to find more information.’

‘I’m going’, Stiles insists.

‘Stiles, you can barely walk,’ pleads Scott.

‘You’re not going anywhere.’ Derek is crossing his arms, his large arms, across his chest. His eyes are telling them he is not to be argued with. ‘Malia will stay with you, here in the loft.’

‘Why me? I don’t want to be useless here . Let Kira or Cora stay—’

She is silenced by a red flash from Derek’s eyes and a deep growl. ‘We need to leave now before the trail goes cold. Lydia, are you sure you’ll be alright?’

Lydia is still pale. It started almost an hour ago, the chills, the presence, the smell of death. She had been startled, as if by some collision and had nearly lost her balance. Then they had called Deaton.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It’s weak now though. I may need your arm when we get closer. The feelings get stronger when you’re closer.’

Stiles is still outraged, and the thought of Lydia going instead of him makes him angrier. ‘You’re seriously leaving me here? With Malia? Just throw me down the elevator shaft and be done with it, I know she will when I’ve been talking to her for less than half an hour.

‘Stiles, this is no time for jokes.’

‘I’m not joking.’

‘What are you going to do? Beat up a demon with your crutches? Talk it to death?’ Scott is becoming exasperated.

‘Ouch. Firstly, I thought we don’t know what it is, and secondly, these crutches are sharper than they look—besides, yesterday I started walking without them…mostly.’

‘You fell over,’ Malia intones bluntly.

‘Enough.’ Derek throws on his leather coat. ‘We don’t have time for this circus. We’re leaving, now.’

On their way to the elevator, Lydia and Scott give him apologetic glances.

When Kira and Cora follow, Kira turns and looks to him in the eyes. ‘When we go looking for it,’ she says quiet but severely, ‘It might not be there.’

At first, he doesn’t understand what she means.

Then they are alone, the elevator’s rumblings are subsiding, and it is still dark outside. Inside, the loft is dimly lit and there are shadows hiding in every corner, behind furniture and fixtures, under the feet of doors and even in the open, behind lights and on the floor. A tin bucket stacked with books casts its own shadow.

‘I suppose,’ Stiles says, moving awkwardly to the bucket, ‘This is when we make some polite conversation, to make things less awkward. How are you doing, Malia? What’s happening on Planet Malia?’

‘Shut up, Stiles.’

He bends to reach the book that has been in the corner of his eye all this time, like an old man, like a shadow of his former self. Shadows everywhere.

When he manages to stand up, leaning on one of his crutches, he sees that Malia has picked something up of her own, though he doesn’t know where from. It is a horned figure on a pendant. ‘Why would Deaton forget this?’ She shakes the pendant emphatically, questioning him, the room, everything with her eyes. ‘He never forgets this—he never even takes it off. Why now?’

There is an uneasy answer in both their gazes.

‘I’ve got to give it back to him. He shouldn’t go out tonight without it. I think he once said that it had protective powers.’ She is quickly heading to the elevator.

‘But wait! You can’t leave me, it’s dark! Numero uno said you can’t leave me!’

‘Come with me then.’ But when he begins to slowly hobble towards her, the book still in one hand, she backtracks. ‘I’ll only be a minute Stiles! I might miss them if I’m not fast. I’ll be back in a minute, I promise.’

She is rumbling away from him before he can think to say anything else. He shuffles, leaning on only one crutch, with the book in his other hand. He pauses, thinks a moment, then lets the crutch fall away. It is painful and uneven, but he makes it to the sofa on his own.

When he sits down, he drops the book and gives himself a congratulatory clap, then he looks about the room and realises no-one will believe him when he tells them what he has managed.

He is alone in a room full of shadows. It is still black outside.

He pulls out the book and puts in on the coffee table. He runs his finger along the spine where he knows the words, _Paradise Lost_ are written. He thinks to himself. He remembers when Deaton spilled the bucket, happened upon it’s open pages. He thinks he will try the same thing for himself.

With a single finger, he selects a random point in its pages, curls and lifts, and when the book is opened at a right angle, he hears something. He turns his head around to the hallway where the elevator has begun its deep rumbling. Though he is not looking at it, he can feel the cover of the book fall to the table, opened.

He is staring at the elevator, listening to it metallic, almost insectile clicking and groaning. He can feel the rusty iron scratching against itself, like a dagger to a dagger. On this occasion, he thinks it sounds different than it used to. Whenever he heard the elevator before, it sounded ugly, but he knew it was heralding a friend; someone he wants to see.

Now, it sounds like the sharpening of knives. He is struck with terror, he can feel it racing suddenly in his chest.

He turns back, ready to roll to the floor, find a piece of furniture to hide under, then he realises what he was first doing. He sees the opened pages and instantly his eyes are hooked upon a single line. How? He doesn’t know. The pages are large and the writing is small. There are too many to read and to understand, words and phrases that are too old to have any meaning with him, lost in complex rhyme and strange poetic form.

And despite all this, he is drawn to a single line:

_Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light._

There is silence.

He does not want to look, and it takes all his strength to turn his head, but he does. He moves his eyes to the elevator.

Standing there is a figure with red eyes. 

It moves, it is approaching, like a predator, like a beast that has chosen it’s kill, like the kill is _theirs_.

‘Derek?’ He breathes.

Derek moves. Fast.

Stiles tries to cry out when he is seized by powerful arms, but the noise is crushed in chest when he is pressed into the sofa.

There is a mouth on his neck. He feels a tongue reach out and draw a long line up to his chin, slick and warm and leaving a trail of wetness along his skin. Then the face buries itself into the crook of his neck and is inhaling, breathing, biting down until a whine escapes Stiles.

He is exposed. He is opened.

He is also in shock. Shocked that the whine has come out. Shocked that he is being pressed into the sofa by all this weight, this muscle, this power. Shocked because he feels that feeling again. That feeling from _outside_.

Their mouths are connecting now, their tongues are dancing. _Dancing_, Stiles thinks. He has never been so connected, so synchronised with another being. He doesn’t know where to place his arms, but he realises they are already clawing at a muscled back. He feels the others arms explore his every contour, reaching, pulling, clawing at his hips.

Then their hips move, an echo of their kiss. They are frustrated with something; it is building between them, but he doesn’t know what _it_ is. He feels his stomach drop. He needs. He _needs_. But what? He doesn’t know, he cannot think, he—

He is losing breath, he is becoming exhausted, quickly.

Then the weight is gone. He is no longer heavy or compressed. His lips are wet, he is breathing heavily. There are no arms on him, no tongue. He is alone with the shadows and the dark and he cannot remember hearing the elevator and its exhausted metallic groans.


	10. I Will Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stories are like hedges: the longer and larger they grow, the more unruly they become. In time, they all need trimming. But that's for another day. At least we have a hedge!

It is very late, so late that dawn has come, and now he supposes that it is no longer late, but instead early. All the shadows have slowly died and have been replaced with bright morning light. He knows this because he has watched it happen, moment by moment, fraction by fraction.

He has not slept, of course. 

He finds it hard enough to sleep when he is waiting for the next nightmare. Adding to the dread of sleep even more thoughts, revolving exhaustively around what happened hours ago, makes the idea of sleeping impossible. He has not even tried. Instead, he has done the same thing for hours. He lets go of the book in hands and watches it slap the floor, opened. He picks it up again, let’s the pages fall randomly. He reads the same line, then drops the book again.

He has occasionally drifted into thought. What is hell, anyway? Is it any worse than what’s happening now? He’d like Deaton, or some mysterious spirit to explain it to him: precisely how hell could be worse? Because surely, there is an odd reassurance to those in hell that things cannot get worse. Surely, it would be a relief?

But he knows. If his encounters with the supernatural have taught him one thing, it is this: things can always be worse. Hell isn’t a plain, a city, a landscape of fire and winged creatures; it is a bottomless void you keep falling down, never knowing when you’ll smash against the ground; it is an eternal missed-step into the darkness. When you look up from your continued fall, you’re tormented as you watch the light recede and shrink and disappear entirely.

What hell will Algernon push him down? He knows _it_ isn’t called Algernon, but he prefers using the name. If Algernon is to take him to hell, why would he let him feel there is any way, any chance at all, of finding that long and hard way to the light? Is he actually influencing this book, this _Paradise Lost_, resting, falling, resting in his hands? If not, who? _What_? Books don’t fall, randomly, again and again, onto the same page. He has creased other pages, he’s even taken a knife to the spine to make another page more likely to fall open, but every time, by impossible chance, the book falls the same way.

When Malia returned, she had found him in his room, doing the same thing. She had asked him he was alright, and he had asked her if she had seen Derek come back to the loft. 

She did not want to leave him alone, but he made it clear to her she had to. He knew, until very late, she was prowling the kitchen, keeping guard, waiting for the pack to return. Then it went quiet, and he knows she will have rested her eyes on the sofa.

He is dropping the book again, on his bed and back to the door when he hears stirring noises outside his room. Then he hears low voices and the handle of his door turns. Someone comes in, someone who has heavy feet.

‘We need to talk.’ He speaks without turning around from his place on the edge of his bed. His voice is hoarse and he needs to sleep. Putting his sentences together is a great effort for him.

‘Yes,’ answers a gruff voice. It sounds as worn as his. ‘But what should we talk about first?’

‘We should talk about the most important thing first.’

‘Yes.’

There is a jumbled mess of words as they both begin speaking. Derek pushes through.

‘Lydia is in a bad way, Stiles.’

‘…Lydia, what? What happened?’ Tell Derek. Tell me now.’

‘We got to the site. Your dad helped us pass through the road closure. There was the body, the bike, lots of flashing blue lights and people with elastic gloves. We searched around but it didn’t take long for Lydia to sense something. Honestly, she was feeling it before we left. But it quickly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t stand up, her eyes were rolling, legs shaking and kicking. She looked possessed. Deaton was with her straight away. He said we had to move her, fast.’

‘Where is she now?’ 

Derek’s eyes grow dark. ‘You’re not going to her, Stilinski.’

Stiles can’t help his eyebrow rising. He thought Derek had learned not to tell him what to do. The alpha never learns. ‘What you going to do? Take my crutches?’ His words almost falter because he thinks this sounds so normal between them. It is as if they are casting shade again, this boyish brutal dialogue between them. He almost falters because he is looking at those lips, remembering what they felt like, their taste.

‘I’ll take more than your crutches.’ 

The growl turns Stiles’ stomach inside out.

‘I don’t…How…How is she?’ He is running his hands through his hair. Faltering, faltering again. Derek moves closer.

‘She’s not entirely herself yet, but Deaton’s with her. She’s in a safe pair of hands.’

‘I need to see her, Derek.’

‘Why? She’s with Deaton and Scott; she couldn’t be in a safer place if she wanted to be—’

‘Because, Derek! Because I just want to fucking see her! I want to see my friends who go out on futile adventures, risking their lives so that _nothing_ can be accomplished!’

He is sure that Malia will have heard him. Maybe now she is awake.

Derek is looking at the floor. His expression is unreadable, but Stiles interprets it anyway. He reads: ‘Are you finished now?’ In a moment his fury translates into something darker. It was at first burning, something you could roast meat on. Now it is poisonous. It is turning things black and venomous. 

‘Am I more important than other packmates? Am I more important to you?’ He spits.

‘What?’

‘Am I more important to you than Malia?’

‘Stiles, why are you—’

‘Am I more important to you than Malia?’

‘No, you’re all _my_ pack.’

‘Am I more important than Scott?’

‘Stiles.’

‘Am I more important than Lydia?’

Derek has stopped answering him. Instead he challenges Stiles with a glare. His skin is changing hues, becoming rosy, dangerously bright.

‘If we’re all equal to you, Lydia and Scott, Malia, everyone else, why are my friends on the front line without me? Why do I have to sit here, waiting to hear from you about how they've gone mad or died?’

Derek shakes his head. When he looks up, Stiles can see his teeth.

‘Think, Stiles. Think carefully before you talk. You talk, talk, talk, but you never _think_. It took _you_ Stiles. It’s playing games with _you_. It’s after _you_.’

‘It’s not just after—’ He almost makes a shout in the surprise. He cannot believe he has nearly done it, nearly killed Derek. It grips him, the reality of a few words; the repercussions of stupidity with an open mouth. When the shout finishes, his jaw remains wide and slack and his eyes stare, vacant with shock. He feels Derek is closer. Derek is gripping his shoulders, tightly.

‘What do you mean, Stiles? Tell me.’ The alpha shakes him, only a gentle rocking, but it has intent. ‘It’s after someone else, isn’t it? Are they pack? Who is it? Who? _Who_?’ He is shaking Stiles more furiously, but he stops when he hears the whimper. The alpha drops his arms. 

They are quiet together, for a long time. Then he moves to the bed. When he sits, the mattress whines against the weight.

‘A young man died this morning in a biking accident. He took a shortcut after route 36 from Susanville. He was speeding, almost ninety miles an hour, at night. He was headed to Beacon Hills infirmary. His girlfriend had their child today. A girl. He hit the cab of a truck and flew right over the bonnet some distance. Felt like a long way when we walked it. Broke every bone in his body when he hit the trees by the roadside. Everything about it was an accident. A freak accident and two drivers who should have known better. If it wasn’t for Lydia, we’d thought we were wasting our time. Just another dead father.’

Stiles looks at Derek.

‘She saw it, I think. She saw whatever it was. She’ll tell Deaton, when she’s ready.’ Derek is reflecting, that sharp jaw of his is grinding, bringing the teeth together. He is not relaxed; everything in his body is strained and taught and waiting to spring. They are both quiet again. This time, it is for even longer. Then the alpha remembers something. ‘You had something to tell me? Something else? It was important.’

Stiles doesn’t answer. He is afraid of answering, afraid of having any more talk, any more reasons to make mistakes. Sometimes his mistakes can kill someone, if he says something he shouldn’t.

_The child will hunger; the child will feed; the child will chase the opened ear and then that ear will bleed._

‘It’s not appropriate. Not now. Look, we’ll talk about it later.’

‘We’ll talk about it now or we’ll never talk about it again.’

Stiles chews his lips. He hates it when Derek is right. Derek always thinks he is right.

‘What’s happening…between us?’

Derek’s eyes darken. He licks his lips, but Stiles can’t make out whether he is…what? Nervous? Or is he reminding himself of the taste? His legs widen a little, he pulls his shoulders back, his chest tight against his clothing. It’s like he’s more powerful the more space he consumes. When he looks passed Stiles, towards the door, his sharp stubbled jaw is angled high.

‘I don’t know.’

Stiles can’t keep his head up. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe it’s the disappointment. Maybe it’s the fear of something complicated. ‘Then what was the kiss?’ He breathes. 

Derek makes a noise and Stiles looks up.

He’s blushing. Fuck. He’s actually embarrassed? He can’t hide it. The feeling makes Stiles want to curl up somewhere, disappear.

‘If it makes you feel better,’ Stiles says slowly, ‘I think it’s a mistake too. Let’s agree never to do it again?’

Derek actually turns his head, like a dog that doesn’t understand. He is clearly confused by something, but he never asks another question.

‘Alright,’ he finally mutters.

There is now a coolness between them that makes this strange and weird. He doesn’t like it. It makes Stiles want to say things he probably shouldn’t.

He can’t help himself.

‘I’m...I’m gay, you know.’

The alpha’s lips curl. They actually fucking curl.

‘Tell me something I don’t know, Stiles.’

‘I just thought...I should get it out there, you know? Remove any doubts. Clear the air. Come out, shall we say? Sorry there’s no music or anything—wait, you already knew?’

Derek is looking at him incredulous and it is another weird moment to see his face change. Normally so stoic, so cold, so immovable, but now so unleashed, so expressive. ‘You kissed me, Stiles.’

‘Educate yourself, get with the times Mr. Alpha. Boys can kiss, doesn’t mean it’s gay.’

‘Besides...I smelt it on you the first time I met you.’

Stiles wants to pick his jaw up from the floor.

‘_Smelt?_ What the hell did you _smell_?’

‘It’s just an expression, Stilinski. I just meant that I knew you swung that way from the start.’

Stiles is speechless for once. It’s probably a moment many people around him have wished for. He works his jaw and tries to say something. He thinks he can hear the creaking of the bones in his face. All the jokes, the banter, the subtle jabs; he thought that’s all they were. Now he begins to realise, the pieces falling into place, that Derek has meant them, all this time. What about the others? Had they meant them too? Was this all some conspiracy? Had he actually been an idiot to think it was some secret, when really, he was the last one in on the joke?

‘How?’ He finally croaks, feeling the sweat on his brow. He knows his alpha can sense this, can even sense the rise in his heartbeat.

‘It’s just a sense we have, us werewolves. We...Stiles...are you okay?’

‘I’m fine!’

The wolf watches him, his eyes shining. ‘You give it away with your eyes, Stiles, that and the fact that you sweat like you’ve ran marathon whenever someone jokes about it.’

Stiles can’t help a small laugh escaping. He feels oddly relieved. It’s like his chest was tight and now it has suddenly unwound, like all the pressure has escaped like built-up air. ‘Does everyone else know?’

‘Some of them have guessed. Scott doesn’t have the faintest idea, of course.’ Derek pauses, ‘Why have you kept it a secret? It’s not like any of us care. It’s not a big deal.’

‘I don’t shake people’s hands, Derek, and say, “Hey, it’s Mr Stilinksi—I’m gay by the way.” It doesn’t just drop easily into conversation.’

‘No,’ Derek bites, ‘but you must have had crushes. You could have just said you liked a guy.’ Derek’s eyebrows rise when Stiles smirks.

‘I did once or twice, you all just missed it. Anyway, we’re losing track of where this conversation started. If a kiss between dudes is gay, then you’re gay too.’

‘It wasn’t _my_ kiss because you came onto me.’

‘I meant the second time, Derek.’

‘The…the second time?’

The world freezes. It burns suddenly at the same time. That lifting from his chest is replaced again by a sudden tightening. Everything is constricting for him and he has momentarily stopped breathing. He finds that he is looking at his alpha, looking closely at his skin, at his eyes, at his lips. He wants match each and every detail to the night before, and he is terrified he’ll find a blemish or a spot that proves to him there is a difference between Derek and the other Derek that seized him and kissed him, the other Derek whose eyes were the colour of blood and were filled with light.

But he cannot find a single difference. Both men are the exact same. If there are differences between them, they lie deeper than their skin.

Then another thought, more terrifying and painful: perhaps Derek is lying. Perhaps he’s too scared to admit to something he’s done, something he’s enjoyed but too terrified to admit.

Because it’s believable, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

He’s not so sure. Right now, he’s not sure Derek can be afraid of anything.

He realises he hasn't said anything, and he is being watched. Closely. ‘Ha!’ He barks, ‘That time must have been a dream.’ He doesn’t know how, but he manages a coy wink.

Derek doesn’t take his eyes away. They narrow and remain fixed on him.

* * *

Scott stays silent because he doesn’t know what to say. There’s a form of fear, a loss of control, when you watch something you thought you’d never see. It punches you in the gut, leaves you speechless and all the while you ask yourself: is this happening? Is this moment real?

Deaton and Derek have exchanged nothing but a glance, but it was more than enough to leave them silent and looking at the wood of the table. They have been this way for too long. The others, the rest of the pack, they stay silent as well. They, like Scott, don’t like what they see. Stiles’ eyes are vacant. He has been very quiet the last few days.

'Whatever game this thing is playing,' says Derek, 'It doesn't just include Stiles. It may be after more than one of us. More than one of us are targets and are specifically in danger.'

Scott cannot help thinking, after his alpha finishes, of the book he found. Of the book that whispers to him using Allison's voice. He takes deep breathes and controls his heartbeat.

Eventually, Deaton speaks quietly and slowly.

‘We were right all along. It’s not a demon. It is too powerful. It is too patient.’ The doctor nervously twists his horned pendant between his fingers. His eyes are downcast and severe. ‘It takes the form of a starving child with red burning eyes. Sometimes its eyes burn so much they turn gold. The child doesn’t speak aloud, but it may speak telepathically. It has the power to enter your dreams, give you visions, nightmares, delirium. We know that it can take a physical form, when it chooses, and that these forms are usually people who are dead or suffering. We know now that it presents itself to those in pain, to those that are dying. It might be killing people. We know it has killed before, but we don’t know exactly how.’

‘You’re still not telling us,’ growls Derek, ‘what _it_ is.’

‘I still don’t know. I would tell you if I did.’

‘Would you?’

Unpleasantness fills the air. It is sour and distrustful. It feels new and dangerous.

‘Derek, not now. We can’t start fighting with each other,' Kira warns. She is inching closer to her alpha, as if the physical touch will calm him, make his stiffening pose soften.

‘You have secrets, Deaton. I can smell them on you. You’ve always known more than you let on. You should know that secrets are dangerous in this pack. I hunt them down. I find them. We can’t keep them anymore. Not now.’

Scott feels like he is watching from a distance at the clash of titans. He is reminded of his presence in the room when Deaton’s eyes, almost imperceptibly, momentarily, switch to him. Within an instant they are back on Derek.

‘Don’t question me, pup. I’ve lived here since before you were born and practised my arts for even longer.’

Derek Snarls. 'This isn't the first time I seem to have more information than you, Deaton. Why is that? Isn't it your job? You're biggest contribution to the pack?'

‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!’ They all look to Stiles, expecting him to shout more, to bury them with a phrase, but he sits back in his seat and looks tired. He hasn’t been sleeping.

Silence holds the room for a long time again.

‘I can and will only tell you what I know, what I or Lydia have observed.’ He moves forward and draws his fingers across the table as if he is sensing the wood, mapping out its skin.

* * *

‘Say only what you can Lydia. You’re tired, and these questions are the last thing you need right now. If you want to stop, just say, and we’ll let you sleep.’

‘...No... I want...I need to answer...I need to tell you...It saw me. It knew I could see it. It was the sharpest thing; I’ve never seen something so clearly. I could hear it as well...like every sound it made was...next to a microphone...It was breathing. It was screaming. It was looking right at me.’

‘Scott, give her some water.’

‘Thanks...’ She wets her lips with and tries to rise a little. ‘It looked like it was playing by the roadside. The flashing blue lights from the police cars and ambulances reflected on it. It was close...to the body. It... touched him. Sat on his back, rocking back and forth like...like a child waiting for something. It had...it had burning eyes; they were golden rings. It was screeching, howling...it was like an animal. Starving...hungry...alone.’

‘What was it doing? Could you sense it?’

‘Yes...It was calling. It was calling into the night...’

* * *

‘I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it isn’t. I can tell you some things we might be able to assume about this...being. It is not a Nogitsune, Anuk-Ite, or Oni.’

‘What about a Wendigo?’ Offers Kira.

‘No. A good idea, but no. It can and does shape shift, but it is too powerful to be a Wendigo and although we know it hungers and feasts, this doesn’t appear to be literal. Not one of us has seen it actually consume the flesh. No, it hungers and feasts for something immaterial. Neither is it a Kanima. I thought about this for a while now. It is possible for a child to be bitten, and children, like adults, can be filled with turmoil. It would explain the shape-shifting, the hunger, the wailing. The child is searching for something, it is calling into the night. But I don’t believe it is calling for a master, or that this child was ever, at any point, a human being. This rules out many other creatures that it could be.’

‘Why don’t you think it has ever been human?’ Asks Malia.

* * *

‘Does it upset you, Scott, to see how Lydia is?’

‘Yes, of course it does.’

He yelps when he feels Deaton’s hands wrap around his neck and push him. In his surprise, his fangs spring out and his eyes turn yellow and lupine, but only for a few seconds. He is pressed against the wall of the corridor outside Lydia’s bedroom, his limbs strike the plaster with a deep thud. He knows he could easily overpower the druid, but he also knows he has been overpowered in a different way.

‘Good. It should. We are privy to secrets, you and I, and secrets are sometimes very costly. We are the only ones who know about the book. Lydia, thankfully, can’t remember anything after it knocked her out. I have long thought it’s something we should tell the others, but now I think it should remain a secret, do you understand?’

‘Why?’

Why? The book was something else entirely. It was not linked to anything that had happened. If Deaton thinks it is, he’s wrong.

He has to be wrong.

‘Because if they know about the book, they will want to see it, touch it, investigate it. I have learned this is something that must not happen.’

‘Why?’ 

Deaton’s hands tighten. He lifts Scott from the wall only to slam him against it again. ‘Do you think I’m a fool? If I could make you forget about the book, I would. You are never to mention it, never to breathe a word of it, do you understand? For the sake of your friends, do you understand? It shouldn’t be too hard; you’ve kept it a secret all this time. But I need you to promise me more than this: you are never even to think of it. Don’t let it slip into your thoughts, and if it does, try your hardest to think of something else. Yes?’

Scott turns his head to the closed door of Lydia’s room. 

This is all his fault, everything that is happening. Everything that will happen, too. If this book as something to do with this...thing, it would have been his fault. He would have unleashed it.

Deaton is wrong. He has to be.

But he likes being told what to do by smarter people. When he tries to do smart things himself, he learns later how stupid he’s been. Right now, he’d do anything to reverse all of this.

‘I understand.’ He is released and abandoned. When Deaton reaches the end of the corridor, he turns his head. ‘Do you know what I see when I look at the book?’

Scott doesn’t answer, isn’t sure he wants an answer.

‘I see the head of Derek Hale above the cover, dripping.’

* * *

‘Because...because things that were once human leave traces of their humanity. You can sense it in their presence and form, even when they shape shift. Lydia can sense it, as a banshee. She hasn’t sensed any human form in this being.’

Scott knows that Deaton is not telling an absolute truth. Sure, the part about human traces and Lydia’s banshee senses may be right, but he knows the druid has information from elsewhere. The druid has a book, an artefact that was never powered or possessed by a human.

Derek growls. ‘That’s not all of it and you know it. You’re not telling us something.’

‘I’m telling you everything I know,’ the doctor insists, ‘And I know a few other things. Firstly, this being is old.’

‘How old?’ Derek’s questions now sound like demands. ‘A century? A millennia?’

‘Older than that. Much older. Which leads me to my second point: we know that, roughly, the power of the supernatural increases with the age of the supernatural. Given the longevity of this being, we can be sure that it is very, very powerful. Thirdly,’ the doctor pauses, ‘I think I know, fundamentally, what the being wants. Perhaps “wants” is not the right phrase, but never mind.’

‘What is it?’ Derek snarls impatiently.

‘Lydia has sensed that it is calling. She saw it reaching out for something.’

Scott senses the sudden shivering from Stiles. He sees the pupils widening before the lids close over them.

He begins to shiver himself because he is thinking of the figure that leaps out of his dreams. The figure with the red eyes.

* * *

‘Calling? Calling to what?’

Lydia closes her eyes, swallows, grips the sheets in bunches in her fists. ‘What do all lost children call out for?’

* * *

‘Parents? It’s calling for its father and mother?’ Derek’s aggression mixes with disbelief and mockery. ‘It’s calling for mummy and daddy?’

‘Stop it,’ croaks Stiles and the alpha instantly softens. He looks and sees the boy with closed eyes.

‘Yes. It is a progeny and it calls for its progenitors. Everything it is doing, I believe, is a means to this end.’

‘But this doesn’t help us,’ says Malia, exasperated. ‘How does any of this information tell us how to defeat it?’

‘I don’t think...I don’t think something like this can be “defeated”. It will have to get its end. This is the only way it will go from here, the only way it will leave Beacon Hills.’

Malia laughs mockingly. ‘We don’t even know what _it_ is, so how are we supposed to know what it’s parents are? How are we supposed to bring them together, like one happy little family?’

‘We don’t know if bringing these beings together is a good idea—it may get rid of them, but at what cost? There’s no point in getting them to leave Beacon Hills if they destroy it when they leave,’ Kira intones.

Cora sighs. She has been quiet up to now on the far side of the room, plucking at the corner of a pillow. ‘We’re back where we started. We have more information, but none of it helps us.’

Derek has his face in his hands.

* * *

‘You’re walking better, Stiles.’ He turns his head from the sink where he is washing a bowl. The pack are milling around, digesting their conversation, trying to rid themselves the feeling of no control. They are all anticipating a way forward, but a wall stands in their way and they are frustratingly pushing against it.

‘Thanks.’ He can’t help clip his words.

‘You alright?’

He drops the bowl into the soapy water with a clatter. 

‘No. There are many, many reasons I could tell you why, but this is the most important: you once told me that it doesn’t worry you, when you get inpatient, angry, when you get in a rage for your pack, so much that you can’t think properly, that reason holds no meaning to you. But it worries me, Derek. It worries me a lot, because I think you are ready for making mistakes. Calm down, don’t bite the heels of the people that are trying to help you. The pack needs gluing together, not chipping apart.’

Derek remains silent. 

Stiles flinches when he feels the alpha’s fingers brush his shoulder. The reaction surprises them both. He resumes washing his dishes. He finishes, and he doesn’t need his crutches when he walks away.


	11. I will Cower

He is here again, standing above Scott’s body. There is werewolf blood on his hands, arms, face. He is breathing heavily from the fury of his strikes. There is screaming all around him.

And clapping. Once, twice, three times in succession, in congratulation.

‘You did not even hesitate, Stiles.’

He looks up and sees a woman. He recognises her. It is Erica, but she is speaking strangely; an echoing voice, childish, and it reverberates across the nightmare. The screaming subsides whenever the voice calls out to him.

‘But you cannot fool me. You would still die for him, wouldn’t you? Would it hurt you to know that Scott has got faster in his dreams? He tears you apart so quickly now!’ It makes a childish laugh that seems to come from every direction.

‘Tears apart! Apart!’

This form of Erica is approaching him; the form of Erica with burning red eyes. ‘It is a painful thought, no? Would he die for you, Stiles? Would anyone die for you?’

He knows he still has a silver knife in his palm. He twists his fingers around the blade in an iron grip.

‘The alpha would die very well,’ this form of Erica says with realisation. A child, realising the meaning of a nursery rhyme. They are very close now. If she were to breathe, if she could breathe, Stiles would feel the disturbance in the air on his cheeks.

‘But why can’t he remember, Stiles? Why can’t he remember?’ It is wailing, apparently distraught. He takes advantage of its distraction and slashes at its face.

It screams hideously, but he doesn’t stop. The violence he’s used on Scott moments earlier is infectious, is still in his blood. He knows he’s flailing about, slashing and striking. He can feel blood, warm and in rivulets on his skin. He slows with the exhaustion of the effort. The body is an unrecognisable mound at his feet. The wailing persists all around him, building a crescendo, hurting his ears. 

He’s screaming; he doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he screams the same phrase over and over again.

‘Maybe it’s not his fault, Stiles.’ The voice disorientates him because he senses its origin coming from behind. When he turns, he sees Derek, he sees the alpha’s lips move but the same childish voice comes from them.

‘Maybe he can’t remember because he wasn’t there?’

Stiles drops to his knees. He is tired and sleep now no longer gives him rest. Why can’t he sleep? No, really sleep. Sleep forever...

This form of Derek kneels beside him and reaches for his face. He flinches again as the cold fingers graze his chin and tilt his head upwards. He cannot feel breathing, feel any warmth, cannot detect any life at all. He is only blinded by burning red light.

‘You are tired, Stiles, but do not worry. You have spent your time, and now it is not far from over. Soon you will have to _choose_. Soon...’

This form of Derek twists his neck, as if he has heard something in the distant darkness. He looks around in a panicked form of searching. He does not find what he is looking for.

Stiles sees this form of Derek; he realises, and is confused by the realisation, that he is searching but is frightened at the prospect of finding and being found. Yes...it wants to be found, but all the while it is fearful. ‘I’m sorry,’ this form of Derek whimpers and sobs, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—’

* * *

He’s been staring at the same place in the ceiling for the past hour. He’s lying on the sofa with his back resting on Scott’s shoulder. His best friend is playing Xbox but keeps losing to the same boss over and over. When he turns his head, he sees the screen curtained with graphic blood and the words, ‘GAME OVER’.

He can see, from the large filthy windows, that it is one of those cold bright winter days. It hasn’t snowed yet, but he’s sure he’d see his breaths in front of him, if he was outside.

‘How long have the others been out?’

‘A long time. How long does it take to get food?’

‘We all eat a lot, to be fair.’

He watches Scott. He stretches. He watches Scott again. He reads another ‘GAME OVER.’ He stretches again. ‘I need to get outside, take a walk.’

Scott frowns, pauses game, puts down his controller. ‘You mean outside as in—’

‘As in fresh air and sunshine, yes outside, Scott—it’s where grass and trees grow, or at least I think that’s right, it’s been so long since I was last outside.’ He breathes slowly. ‘Sorry, I didn’t…I’m not sleeping…I know you aren’t either, it’s no excuse.’

‘Hey,’ Scott’s expression is too understanding and it only makes Stiles feel worse, ‘No problem buddy. But…do you think Derek will like the idea?’

‘Derek can go fuck himself.’

‘Charming language, Stiles.’ 

Scott yelps. The alpha has emerged from a doorway behind them.

‘Let’s cut to the chase: you’re going to tell me I can’t go, and I’m going to ignore you anyway.’

‘No, actually I think we should go.’

‘We?’

‘Yes. We. As in, you and me.’ Before Scott can say anything, Derek growls at him. ‘Not you.’

* * *

Like my dreams, Stiles thinks, looking up at the trees. The pines and conifers remain green, but the aspens have shed almost all their leaves; only a few remain clinging desperately to their branches, waiting to fall in a sudden breeze and join the dead upon the frozen mud.

Everything else sleeps or has died quietly in the cold.

He takes a deep breath; it tastes of damp and dirt. It is fresh and bitingly cold. With every lungful, he feels more at home.

He remembers these forests and the night Scott was bitten in it. This forest, the witness of many events for the pack, always in darkness and mist. During the day, it is strange to hear the forest filled with birdsong. It is something he has forgotten.

He is lost with his freedom, liberated, outside, that he forgets he is not alone.

‘Feeling better?’ It is a snapping twig in his thoughts. ‘So much better, thanks,’ he answers. They are walking along a dirt track to reach a place called Blind Man’s Boulder, a rockfall mound about three miles away. When they reach it, they will turn back and return on the same route. Six miles; a short walk for an alpha, but a hike for someone who’s learning to walk again.

‘A name like Blind Man’s Boulder doesn’t make much sense, does it? How would a Blind Man see a boulder, let alone own it? It’s not as if the boulder is shaped like a blind man, because, blind men don’t have shapes different to any other men, do they? It’s cold isn’t it? That’s always the best polite conversation, isn’t it? It’s always awkward asking questions when they don’t get answers, no?’ He has been talking like this for most of their walking. Only now does Derek acknowledge him with a reply.

‘I remember, years ago, I watched you play in these woods.’

‘So you’ve always been the creepy brooding type?’ Derek replies with a dark glance.

‘I was a few years older at the time, so I sneered at you and the childish games you played.’

‘You had a sense of superiority? You really haven’t changed.’

‘Shut up, Stiles. I’m trying to be...sincere.’ Stiles makes for another retort but stops when he catches Derek’s glare. ‘Even though you were alone, I remember this clearly: you never stopped talking. Same as now, guess we all never change. You talked, talked, talked, all day long about what you were doing, what you were playing. I was laughing at you a lot.

‘Ouch. That’s not very nice, is it?’

‘Not...I didn’t mean it that way. I was...it was like I was laughing with you.’

Stiles crushes a branch underfoot like a bone. He wonders if their path is long enough for this conversation.

‘The hours went on and on and still you talked and played. The energy you had; you must have been a real challenge for your dad. It was like you’d drank a can of sugar.’ Stiles snorts; he may have been a challenge once or twice. He remembers a time when his dad had to chase him down, like he was a tire rolling free from an engine. Stiles was chasing a ball kicked free from the yard but was too young to understand the concept of getting run over. Ball, child, father, truck, all speeding down the lane outside the house. Another time he’d accidentally thrown a rock through the kitchen window—he’d meant to hit Scott, but the bastard had ducked. 

He was smiling now.

‘Then it got dark,’ Derek continues, walking a little fast for him. He wants to tell him to slow down as he feels a straining climb up his shins. ‘I could tell you had got lost. You went back on yourself many times. You started yelling at the trees and when that didn’t work you started kicking the trunks you passed. Then you started crying.’

Stiles feels the blood flush across his face. He’s trying to think of something worse than his alpha watching him behave so childishly and perhaps it explains much about the years later, when Derek only ever treated him like a child. He’s sure Derek is enjoying every moment of this. But when he looks into the werewolf’s eyes, he doesn’t see any glint of amusement. Instead he sees seriousness, sternness in the contours of his face.

‘You don’t remember, do you?’

‘Remember what?’

‘That was how we first met. You think you just happened to find your way out?’ 

‘You...led me out? Is that what you’re telling me?’ He sees a look of confirmation on Derek’s face. ‘Liar liar pants on fire!’

‘It’s _not_ a lie,’ Derek answers sternly, his voice taking an almost gruff tone. ‘You don’t remember?’

‘I...I always thought I made my own way back. But...now I think about it’s a repressed memory, you know? Maybe the first time I met you I overdosed on jerk and my brain has made me forget it to avoid the trauma.’

‘Shut up Stiles, you’re not very grateful. You looked so small, so scared, so vulnerable. I helped you. You would have probably been eaten by something without me.’

Stiles hates it when Derek is right.

From what he knows of Beacon Hills, it might not be a joke. He’s sure something would have been out there, waiting. He’ll never acknowledge it though.

‘The only thing I wasn’t safe from was you, sourwolf.’ Derek growls, and Stiles thinks it’s a half-assed attempt at a laugh.

‘Funny how history repeats itself, though. Here we are again, walking round the trees, you guiding me, protecting me,’ he flutters his eyes dramatically, ‘making it all traumatic again.’

‘How is this in any way traumatic?’

‘Well to start with,’ Stiles answers, grinding his teeth, ‘we’re walking too fast and my legs hurt.’

Derek slows and then comes to a halt entirely.

Stiles isn’t frustrated with the walking. It’s not the conversation or the company, per se. It’s the elephant, or rather, the field of elephants, between them, in every room they share, the enormity, the oppression of the things they try to avoid talking about. It leaves his blood hot and his skin damp. His heart beats a little faster because every interaction between them has to be conditioned, prepared, before it can be made confidently. He has to think carefully about what he says in order to avoid saying the things that cannot be spoken.

The Kiss.

The Kisses.

The...two Dereks? Or just two sides of the same Derek?

‘Are you alright?’ The alpha drops his face, even just for a moment, and it takes Stiles off his guard, that look of genuine concern.

‘I’m fine,’ he mutters. ‘I just...don’t understand why you wanted to do this today?’

‘Do what?’

‘Stop playing stubborn, you always answer questions with more questions! A trip to Disneyland Anaheim, this fucking walk today of course!’

‘You wanted to get outside, so I took you. You know you need protecting, so I’m your escort.’

‘Yes, but why _you_? You don’t think any of this is awkward? As if we hadn’t experienced enough already?’

‘I’m _your_ alpha, it’s my responsibility.’

Stiles laughs bitterly.

‘You’d rather not be around me?’ The werewolf asks.

‘No!’ It comes as a burst, too suddenly. He realises two things simultaneously: first, that he really doesn’t want Derek to leave; second, he realises just how much he wants him to stay.

Derek’s lips fucking curl. It appears to be uncontrolled; he cannot help it. It makes Stiles hate him and want to kiss him at the same time.

‘I just thought you would want to stay clear of me. You know, after everything. I feel...I feel like you’re playing games with me.’

‘I’m not playing games. I don’t play games, Stiles.’

‘Then what are you doing? First, you flirt, we kiss, then you leave, but you want to act like nothing has changed. Then you kiss me. Again, you want to act like nothing happened.’

The werewolf shakes his head, and Stiles can see tension in the powerful muscles of his neck as it twists. ‘Stiles, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never kissed you.’

He stares at the trees. He notes the slender trunks and their branches and evergreen bristles. He thinks about the birdsong and the smell of damp. He temporarily distracts himself with the sensory delights of a Californian fall. He breathes it in. It is a type of momentary therapy.

Then he breathes out again.

‘But...’ says Derek, suddenly suggestive, and under his chin, Stiles can feel warm fingers pushing his face skyward, ‘I never said I didn’t want to.’

Then there are warm lips on his and the scratching of stubble against his chin. His lips are gently prised open, he lets it happen, and he lets another warm tongue roll over his. The tongue plays with his, dances with his. It has a willing partner, and together they taste each other and move as one.

I need air, he thinks, but right now he’d rather be breathless. Another second? Then ten? Why not an hour? Or a year? Why not until the evergreens drop their leaves or when the birds stop singing?

When they part, he inhales deeply. He realises, by some instinct, he has closed his eyes and that now, when he opens them, he looks in to shining red eyes.

‘There,’ says Derek. ‘That’s a second kiss.’

His eyes change.

Voids open in them, like pools of ink, widening so much they look as if they are going to eclipse the irises.

He feels pressure on his hips, concentrated in points; a tightening, a gripping. He realises Derek’s hands had rested so gently on them—he hadn’t noticed they were there until now, digging into his skin.

‘What’s wrong?’

Derek’s jaw grinds.

‘I smell blood.’

His expression makes Stiles want to pull away and run. At the same time, he wants to make a joke, the nervous kind he uses in awkward social situations. ‘There’s always something that’s got to stop the fun.’ It isn’t smart, and he can’t even compensate for it with any comedic timing. He sounds afraid.

‘I can smell it. _It’s_ here.’

‘We need to find Deaton. Call him. If you carry me, we can run from here.’

‘No. Stay here.’

He seizes Derek’s muscled arm. ‘You can’t be serious? You’re leaving me here? What am I supposed to do when it finds me, talk it to death? Limp away?

‘Stay here. I won’t be long. If I’m not back in ten minutes, walk the path back.’ The alpha tries to move, nearly takes Stiles with him with the speed and force of his movement.

‘Derek! Wait. You remember the time we talked about you “rage-state”, yeah? That you’ve never regretted it? I’m telling you: this isn’t a good idea. We should stick together.’

‘Stiles, we are stronger than we think. How can we know how to destroy it without fighting it? We have to try, even once.’

‘It’s not worth the risk.’

‘It is. It is because we risk being run into a corner we can’t fight from.’

‘It’s better to run into a corner than die now.’

‘Look, Stiles, we are never going to find out anything about this _thing_, never, unless we see it, fight it, understand it’s weaknesses. This is a chance, to protect you, to protect others.’

‘You haven’t learned, have you? You still want to rush into things, no plan, no idea what you’re doing. We’re not the fucking A-team, Derek. When we fight, we can die. We _have_ died.’

Derek’s nostrils flare; he is sensing the accusatory tone that Stiles couldn’t suppress. He can’t tell anymore whether it’s blood-lust or rage that makes his eyes burn so brightly.

‘You’re never going to let me be forgiven for that, are you?’

‘It’s not my forgiveness you need.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I thought you would have learned at least something by now. Learned how costly actions can be, how costly rash decisions are.’

‘I’ve never forgotten the most important thing I’ve learned: instead of talking about doing something, sometimes it’s just best to do it. That’s what leaders have to do. They also have to take responsibility for when anything goes wrong. All of it. On their shoulders. They have to listen to people, who have no responsibilities, lecture them, blame them; people who only ever talk about doing things.’

‘You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met.’

Derek’s growl is ferocious. He sees the teeth sharpening into fangs, the glaze, like a film, veiling across his eyes like a cloth. A red mist descending and obscuring. He tenses his claws, ready for a fight, but with what? The demon? Stiles?

‘It’s come here for you. It thinks it can hurt you. It thinks it can hurt _my_ packmate.’ He shakes his hand free. He, Stiles, thinks the alpha is about to leap at him, but when the werewolf lurches, it is away amongst the trees and the daylight shadows of their branches.’

‘Derek!’

It is useless. He’s gone with inhuman speed.

‘Fucking idiot!’

Only the trees are listening. One of them sheds a solitary leaf in acknowledgement, and it settles with a gently crisp whisper into mud. A breeze falls like a breath across the vegetation; branches moan and interact with one another, chitter-chattering at the brush of their long, gnarled fingers. This breath reaches him, exhales over him, passes. It is a cold breath.

He feels exposed, open, vulnerable. 

He picks up a branch. He decides Derek can go fuck himself. He’s not waiting here for ten minutes. He’s not waiting at all. He begins to walk back the way they came, branch in his hands like a blade. He holds it like a boy, like he has no idea what to do with it.

Another breath, colder. It raises the hairs on his neck. He feels a steady pain in his legs, like someone is trying to snap his shins as if they were matchsticks. He keeps walking fast, ignores the warning pain.

It’s like history repeating itself. He feels like he did when he was lost and alone and crying. But he isn’t lost because he is going back the way he came.

Abruptly, he stops. He sees it ahead. Standing there, still and silently horrifying.

A rock, uniquely shaped, and long ago fallen from an escarpment. Blind Man’s Boulder.

But it couldn’t be. He had walked the way back. He couldn’t have been so much of an idiot to have walked the wrong way. Or could he? Maybe he did, in his panic?

He takes deep breaths, because it’s okay, he only needs to turn back and follow the path in the opposite direction. Everything is fine, everything is quiet.

But he panics when he feels another breath, colder, on his neck. He panics when the leaves do not shake, or the branches moan, or trunks creak. 

He whirls around, throws the stick in the movement but it cuts only air. He holds it in front, defensively as he searches for…anything.

Something hard, like a boot, slams into his back and he flies forward. Air is forced out his mouth and he sees dirt and leaves. When he finishes gasping, he groans, he reaches desperately for the stick which is flung just out of reach. His fingers are brushing the wood when they freeze. When he hears the childish giggling behind him.

He rolls over, crawls backwards on his elbows, backing away from…himself. His childish self. With wet red eyes and running nose. It’s wearing his clothes, the one’s he had when he was nine or ten. Why are there so many colours, none of which match? Yellows and reds, greens and blues. His coat is too big for him and has cartoon animals stitched into it.

It follows him, but at a short distance. ‘I’m afraid,’ it whimpers, over and over. ‘I’m afraid.’

Far away, he hears a roar. Where had it come from? From which direction? He’s looking for it. When he looks back at himself, his childish form, he knows it is watching him closely, curiously.

Then, from a pocket stitched with a waving and smiling cartoon wolf, it pulls out a knife. The same knife. The blade is terrifyingly long, so much that it couldn’t have come from the shallow pocket.

It’s like Mary Poppins, he thinks. I’m going to die thinking of Mary fucking Poppins.

‘Derek!’ He screams.

But it doesn’t approach him. It lifts the shining metal to its scalp and draws the blade slowly across its own head.

They both scream in pain. Stiles feels warmth cascade down his face. It runs down the bridge of his nose and falls in droplets like rain from a drainpipe.

Another roar, louder, nearer.

The blood keeps drop, drop, dropping. The top of his head feels as if it has been ripped open. He is crawling back and back, on his elbows. It follows. The pain is burning, stinging, but all he can think about is Derek.

It is fast, too fast to understand until it is over already. There is a flash in his vision, a shade that erupts into view. When Derek sees the child Stiles, bleeding and holding a bloody knife, he hesitates for a moment. Then he flies at it, claws darting out. When he reaches the child, he barrels into it.

But it is gone, and he slams into nothing but air. He falls, rolls into the leaves. When he realises he hasn’t missed, that the child had in fact disappeared, his red, furious eyes scan around the area until they find him.

‘Stiles.’

He’s kneeling beside him in a heartbeat, very carefully inspecting the source of the blood. Stiles hears something ripping and he realises Derek has pulled apart his shirt to make a covering. He’s swaying a little with the pain and shock, but he sees Derek’s chest as he works the cloth to Stiles’ head. He sees its firmness, the crowing pectorals, the muscled ridges of his abdomen. When the alpha moves to tie the cloth, place it down onto his scalp, Stiles hisses with sharp pain. It’s good that blood is pouring from his head. This way it can’t flush his cheeks.

That feeling, that _outside_ feeling, urges him to raise his hand, brush his fingers against the skin.

‘It’s a shallow cut. You think you can stand?’ By now, Derek has fully returned to his human form.

‘Yeah.’

‘Give me your arm.’ He holds one out and Derek lifts him up as if he weighed of nothing. When he’s on his feet, he falls into Derek, arms around his shoulders. He doesn’t care how he must look, because on the trees are watching them. He drops his head, exhales into Derek’s neck; he lets himself be held up because this way he feels he’ll never fall again.

They hold one another silently for a long time.

‘You didn’t get the fight you were looking for.’

‘No. But I did get something.’

‘What?’

‘It showed me where it hides. Where we can kill it.’


	12. I Will Want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love showers.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing? Look at this? Look at the mess he’s in.’ Stiles hisses when Malia parts his hair. ‘The point of you being with him was to keep him safe, not leave him there like a piece of meat.’

‘Hey! I put up a fight!’

‘Please Stiles, at best you’re a mediocre tool for distraction. What did you fight with?’

‘It was a…it doesn’t matter what I fought with, it’s how I used it that’s important.’

‘I can see you used it very well,’ she says, applying a damp cloth to the bloody skin.

‘FUCK!’

‘Calm down, it’ll be over soon.’

‘You could have told me you were using disinfectant.’

‘What would have been the point? You would have resisted, and I would have ignored you anyway.’

‘You know, you’re not very matronly.’

‘Then it’s fortunate I’m not a nurse, isn’t it?’

Derek has been quiet, silently absorbing Malia’s anger from the safety of the kitchen. It’s strange to watch him cower from his own pack. Hours earlier he was ready to fight so fiercely. 

‘What if he’d been killed? What then?’

‘I wouldn’t let that happen. It was never going to touch him.’

‘It _did_ touch him.’ 

Derek drops his head, his dark hair shadows him. 

‘If it’s any consolation,’ Stiles can’t help saying, ‘It didn’t actually touch me. I did it to myself.’

* * *

‘You want to hear what they’re talking about?’ Kira looks anxiously at the closed door. Minutes earlier, Deaton had let Scott and Derek in, before closing the door and turning the lock. ‘You’d think we tell each other everything? Are they forming some sort of plan? The _men_ of the pack? We should storm in.’

Stiles is listening, partly. He thinks, am I not a man too? He has a book in his hands. He opens it, lets the pages drift in the air and settle of their own accord. _Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light._

_ It showed me where it hides. Where we can kill it._

But a book? How can something hide in a book?

Derek had decided not to tell him anything more, had decided that it was better to brood and keep silent amongst his thoughts, same as always. It had caused a few harsh words, words he now regretted. More or less. Water under the bridge, or slurry under the fallen tree. He’s sure whatever the metaphor, they can weather it.

It seems to him that with some people, no matter how many times you fight, you always end up returning to each other’s company smiling.

‘They aren’t making much noise…It’s making me nervous. I’d feel better if they were shouting. Is that weird?’

‘No. Sometimes is better to hear something familiar than silence.’

She looks up at him. ‘Are you nervous?’

‘Yes, I am. I don’t like it when Derek is locked in rooms with people who help make decisions.’

‘You should be careful,’ she remarks, ‘Alphas don’t like their authority questioned, and Alpha’s like Derek don’t like it even more.’ She watches him handle the pages of the book in his hands. ‘Well, except when you do it. He likes it when you do it, I think. He just doesn’t know it yet.’

‘Be a dear and tell him that,’ he says extravagantly. He notices that when Kira starts the next conversation, she sits more upright. He’s not her interrogator, but now he feels like he’s got the bloody instruments in his hands.

‘Why would Scott be in there too?’

_Why indeed?_

‘Scott’s a leader, even if Derek’s the alpha. It’s always good to follow Scott.’

‘Do you follow Scott?’

He understands her point. He doesn’t meet it. She wrings her hands. ‘We should be in there with them.’

‘You worried about Scotty?’

‘I don’t worry.’

‘That must be nice.’

‘Why do you keep turning that book open, over and over again? It’s all I see you doing.’ He hands it over and she reads aloud. “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” Very cheerful, Stiles.’

* * *

‘Are you and Derek alright?’ Lydia catches him off-guard with the question whilst they are eating lunch together.

‘Yeah, why do you ask?’

She squints a little, watches him closely. It is an uncomfortable feeling because he’s trying to eat spaghetti.

‘There’s something…off between you two. You’re not at each other’s throats like you used to be. You’re quiet, like you don’t know what to say around each other anymore. Sometimes I see you looking at him like you want to say something, but you hold back, and sometimes I see him looking at you like he wants to throttle you. Stiles, I know you’ve not forgotten what happened, whilst you were in hospital, and that’s totally fair, but don’t you think—’

‘Woah there Oprah, we’re good. We’re all good. As good as we can be.’

She keeps surveying him. ‘You would tell me, if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you? Who am I kidding, of course you would, but why is Derek angry with you?’

‘He’s always been like that with me.’

‘Yes, we all know that, but this is different. Now he looks like he wants to tear at you. He glares at you when you’re not watching, you know. He lifts his eyes up, or looks out the tail ends, so he can watch you without turning his head. He thinks no-one’s noticing, but I see. You know how we used to joke, that he had a crush on you?’

Stiles nearly spits his spaghetti out. Lydia’s eyes narrow, but she doesn’t say anything.

‘We used to joke that he had a crush on you because of how angry he looked at you all the time. Maybe it’s true? Maybe he actually does? Think about it—he’s never said he wouldn’t get with a guy. We shouldn’t assume he’s one hundred percent straight.’

‘Wow Lydia, I think you’ve put more than salt in that carbonara.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I think you’ve gone mad.’

‘What about you? Do you have any crushes? Wow, Stiles, try to keep some of it on your plate. It’s not me is it?’

* * *

This dream comes to him, a breath between two terrors. Each night cascades into something worse and yet, increasingly, _outside_ dreams come to him, demulcent, welcome reprieves from fear and waking up in the dark.

Running water. Steam—so thick you can feel it enter the lungs and moisten them, feel the warmth at the back of your throat, clearing your sinuses. It is on your skin; it dampens your hair. He is in his clothes, but he so desperately wants to be rid of them.

He approaches the shower, not just because the _outside_ tells him to, but because he wants to. He sees misted glass, opaque, and a blurred form, almost ghostly and yet so definitely alive, so colourful, so real. It is washing itself, under the arms, across the torso. The form looks up into the water, then down at its feet. It touches every inch of its own skin.

He pulls at the door, slides it open, steps in. His clothes are immediately soaked, but it doesn’t matter. There isn’t much room, but that doesn’t matter, too. 

Derek places both his palms upon the wall. He drops his head and the running water rains from his black hair. Those arms cross the shower space like enormous pillars. Stiles ducks under them, emerges between them. The water falls on him too. He looks into starving red eyes, eyes that are fixed upon him and he brushes his lips against Derek’s, bites down gently on the lower, sucks it, lets it go.

Those arms bend, hinge at the elbow until the space is closed between them and Stiles is pressed into the wall by the solidness that is Derek.

They merge into one, not just physically, but in thought too.

Many things merge. He doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, whether thoughts are _outside_ or in. Right now, they are one and the same. They are both sides of the same coin, spinning, so fast it blurs into one indivisible sphere.

* * *

‘You and Derek…good, yeah?’ Stiles cannot help rolling his eyes. Now it’s Scott’s turn. Though he is surprised because until now Scott has been avoiding him. He has been looking like he’s not quite sure where he is, like he’s forgotten something. It is like he has taken a keepsake from Stiles, lost it, and now that he needs to return it, he is facing the guilt.

‘Yes, we’re fine. We’re not fighting. We’re all good.’

Scott blushes, looks intensely at the laundry he’s folding. He avoids Stiles’ eyes.

‘I didn’t think anything like that. I have senses, remember, senses that you don’t have. I pick up on things Derek does, things that you don’t notice.’ When Stiles doesn’t say anything, he continues. 

‘Don’t laugh at me, dude, because I can’t believe I’m saying this but…I can smell it on him, Stiles. He…he likes you.’

Despite what Scott has asked of him, Stiles cannot help laughing.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Scott’s face has turned crimson.

‘Hold it there. You’re trying to say, in the most Scotty way possible, that Derek is giving off a scent that tells you he likes me?’

‘It’s not just the smell. He looks at me sometimes. At first, I thought he was angry with me; I was going to talk to him, ask him what was wrong. He was angry more than usual. But then I realised. This look he gave me was always when I was around you. If I was touching your arm, he would scowl at me. If I played games with you, spent time with you, he was looking at me as if I was walking over his backyard. He wanted to go on this walk with you, and he didn’t want me to come with you. He wanted to be alone with you.’

Stiles is laughing more, but he realises that it isn’t coming out right. It doesn’t sound natural, it has a hint of nervousness. Like he’s been caught.

Scott’s eyes search him and for a moment Stiles thinks that he’ll let it pass, not realise what he’s stumbled upon.

‘You know he likes you, don’t you?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Stiles squeaks.

‘There’s something going on between you?’

‘Have you gone mad?’

‘Stiles, you’re smiling like a clown. What’s surprising you? The fact that I, for once, have caught you lying, or the fact that I know you like dudes?’

Stiles slams his fist into the nearest surface. There’s a loud bang that jarringly halts the nervous laughter, the almost gentle teasing. He doesn’t utter another word.

He leaves Scott, who is letting the clothes in his fingers fall from his grip.

But he cannot leave. He can only move to his room, slam the door. He would take off outside, but with everything that’s happened, he can’t think of a more stupid thing to do or a worse way to repay his friends. But he hates the constraint, the feeling of being locked within the walls of Derek’s raw brick-wall loft. They may have worked together to plug the leaks, the pack together in clothes they didn’t care were stained, labouring to introduce something human to Derek’s impersonal lair. Nevertheless, a prison is a home you cannot leave.

He falls onto his mattress. He looks to the table by his bed. _We found those too, but we put them in your bedside drawer, second from the top. _

If only, he is thinking. It would be a great distraction right about now.

He doesn’t know exactly why he’s angry. He thinks, maybe it’s not anger at all. Maybe it’s something else.

There’s a timid knock on the wood of his door.

‘Please Scott, not now.’

‘But Stiles…’ He pushes through the door anyway. He walks over, more like a puppy than a werewolf. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise I was upsetting you.’

‘You know, you’re only making it worse.’ And he is, because Stiles can feel the water forming in his eyes; he can feel the unsteadiness in his throat.

Scott sits next to him, places his legs intimately next to Stiles. ‘What did I do wrong?’ Something’s wracked in his voice.

‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You took me by surprise. I’m sorry, I’m the one being a jerk.’

He flattens the bedding at his side, strokes out the creases.

‘I…you know, I had this whole scene, planned in my head about how I was going to tell you, but I always told myself: what’s the point? He already knows. He won’t be surprised. He doesn’t care. I knew all that, Scott. But then, I never told you, did I? I just kept imaging this scene in my head, thinking, yes, the time will come, and it will make sense. I was so wrapped up in my own narcissism that I forgot that it didn’t matter. Because I knew it didn’t matter to you.’

‘But you were angry. You hit the wall. Stiles you never hit things. Well, unless you’re losing at something. Well, losing at anything.’

‘Maybe it was just a thing I wanted control over, you know? I think it was something I wanted to tell you in my own time. You’re fucking werewolf senses never let me keep secrets.’

‘It doesn’t have to be something you have to say, though, does it? Why should you have to say anything? It’s not like any guy has to announce that he likes girls?’

‘That would be swell, but not everyone has super werewolf senses, and more importantly not everyone is like you. Have you ever walked up to a girl and thought, if I ask her for her number, is she going to look at me like I’m some creep? Is she going to think I’m some pervert who dared be attracted to her in such a _wrong_ way? Is she going to hit me at even the idea that I like her?’

Scott shrugs his shoulders. ‘More than you’d think, but I know what you mean.’

Stiles is quiet for a while.

‘You know, Stiles, you really don’t need to say anything. But as your best friend, I’d like to think if you liked someone, you’d tell me.’

‘Alright, I’ll tell you. I like Derek. I think he likes me.’

‘You think?’

Stiles blushes. He hates what he must look like. ‘But there’s something not right, something I can’t say—’ Scott suddenly stiffens. ‘No, not that I _can’t_ say, more like I don’t know _how_ to say. It’s a feeling, like it’s not _my_ feeling. Like it’s coming from _outside_ of me.’

Scott is looking at him with tense, serious eyes. ‘Sometimes, when you feel something you haven’t felt before, it scares you. It happened to me with…with Alison.’

Stiles isn’t sure. Scott loved Alison. Loves her. Can he, Stiles, say the same about Derek?

It’s hard for him to understand: is he afraid because the feeling is from the _outside_, or does his fear make the feeling feel like it is from the _outside_. He doesn’t think Scott can help him, isn’t sure he wants Scott to help him right now. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ he says.

There’s a creak by the door. A foot is too heavy on the floor. When they both look, Stiles feels the heat on his cheeks. He’s sure Scott pales.

‘Derek.’

‘Stiles.’

The alpha looks over Scott as if he’s a piece of the furniture that he wants to move. Away from Stiles. He draws his shoulders back, like he’s restraining himself. ‘I’m making drinks. Want something?’

‘Daniels on the rocks please.’

‘Do you know what “on the rocks” means?’ Derek says, crossing his arms.

‘Why don’t you surprise me.’

‘Scott?’ Derek looks over to him cocking his head. 

‘Just some water.’

Derek smirks, then he leaves them.

When he’s sure the Alpha can’t hear them, even with his heightened senses, he changes the conversation. ‘What have you decided, then?’

‘Decided?’

‘In the panic room you made for yourselves—you, Derek, and Deaton?’

Scott pales and looks away. ‘We didn’t decide anything. We were just talking, that’s all.’ Stiles can’t help getting angry at this. What’s the point in lying? What’s the point in pretending that nothing was happening? Wouldn’t it be easier, no matter what it was, to just talk about it? It’s not as if they could get worse news.

‘Fine. Keep it a secret. That worked out so well last time.’ He gets up to leave, to storm out dramatically, then realises that this is his room. He stands awkwardly, hoping Scott will understand it is his cue to leave. He remains sat down, head down, skin white and sweating.

‘I’m not a good friend, Stiles. I’m a bad friend,’ he says quietly. When he does get up to leave, his eyes are moist.

* * *

He’s trying to find Cora’s room. Despite all the time they have shared the same loft, he has never had a reason to be in it. She has asked him on messenger to get her cardigan. She has left it on the sofa downstairs and wants him to bring it up, if he isn’t doing anything. It is her favourite cardigan, apparently, though he has never seen her wear it.

He finds a steep iron spiral stairwell. He can climb it easily now, almost like normal. He only has to go a little slower, exchanging the weight carefully between his feet.

When he reaches the top, he navigates a raw-brick hallway with lots of doors, and under his arm is a red woollen cardigan. The first door he passes has been scarred by a knife. In jagged letters, like a love-note carved into a tree, it reads: ‘Fuck off.’ He guesses this is Malia’s room. The next door has a signed neatly hung from a nail and it reads in neat letters, ‘Try next door.’ He walks on and realises there is only more raw brick wall.

After wondering back and forth, he eventually finds a solitary door obscured by a corner in the hall. It hasn’t got anything carved or nailed onto it—it is covered only with white paint, clean and empty, slightly ajar, and the room behind it is filled with daylight so sharp he can see the particles of dust in the air. There are noises, he thinks it is the sound of wood rhythmically creaking; the same pace as waves upon a beach or a pendulum in a clock. With his free hand he nudges the door open a little more.

He sees a steel bar screwed into a two parallel wooden ceiling beams. He sees legs crossed over one another at the ankles, rising and falling in the air. As the torso moves up, the calves tense, tighten, and rise so that they are in front of the waist. He sees the abdomen, toned and rippling, and he sees the ‘V’ that falls below the line of a pair of shorts. He sees the broad chest and arms straining with the sheer mass they are being forced to carry, and the contours of the shoulders that make the whole upper body look thick and powerful. He can see a shine, a layer of sweat on the skin, glistening.

Despite the consistency of the movements, the rhythmic sounds, like the pendulum of a clock, Stiles loses all sense of time. His legs would carry him all day if they needed to because right now he could ignore the fatigue and pain.

He only realises how long he must have been stood there, watching like an idiot, when the pendulum stops swinging, when Derek has let himself down and let his arms drop to his sides, his fingers plucking and pulling at the fabric of his shorts.

He doesn’t say anything. Not a single word. He just looks directly into Stiles with those starving red eyes. His lips curl, then he nods. Stiles nods back. 

That _outside_ feeling tells him to pluck at those shorts too. Pull at them, so that inch by inch he can see what the skin looks like underneath. So that he can reach out, run his fingers down, brush the hair, and softly, softly touch…

He feels his pants straining.

He stumbles away, realising he hasn’t found Cora’s door yet, and he thinks he should wait against a corner in place no one can see him, wait until he’s ready to be seen again.

Derek has appeared in the crack of his door. ‘What are you hiding for?’ He asks.

_Yes Stiles, what for? What for?_


	13. I Will Try

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Just go with your instincts. You’re already sexy.’
> 
> So he does.
> 
> His instincts, or the _outside_ thoughts, they are one and the same. They bring him to his knees and pulling at the strap of Derek’s belt. The alpha falls back against the hallway wall. He lets Stiles do the rest.

An eyebrow rises. Red eyes are fixed upon him with a strange intensity. It could just be the exercise, or it could be something more.

‘You coming in?’ He asks.

‘I’m looking for Cora’s room. I need to give her this.’ He indicates to the clothing hanging from his forearm. The alpha leans against the frame of his door, still naked to his shorts and shining with sweat. He points down the corridor. ‘That way. But—’

‘What?’

‘I’m sure she’s in no rush. I want to show you something.’ He doesn’t wait to see if Stiles follows him back into his room.

‘Stand there.’

Stiles drops Cora’s cardigan on the neatly made bed.

‘Put your arms out here and here.’ Stiles realises what Derek is trying to get him to do.

‘I’m not doing a pull up Derek.’

‘You’re right. You’re going to do five.’

‘I’m sorry, did this loft suddenly become Derek’s new Military Academy for Wayward Pack Members?’

‘You’re going to do five because you can, not because I’m telling you to.’

Stiles eyes the bar, the height. It’s been a long while since he’s exercised, and it never helps when Adonis himself has been showing off moments earlier. But he’s not completely unfit, and he’s hated how, ever since breaking his legs, he’s been the weakest pack member. He wraps his fingers around the bar, but he has to stand on tiptoe and reach as far as he can. Derek had made it look easy, rising and falling as he had.

He feels hands on his hips. They don’t grasp or apply any pressure; they just make themselves known, guiding his balance and weight. They could lift him in a moment, but they don’t. He makes a long exhale through his nose.

‘Go on,’ he hears next to his ear. He feels the stubble, the sandpaper scrape of Derek’s cheek brushes the back and side of his neck. Stiles feels a shiver run through him, then he lifts.

It is easier than he expects; or rather he is stronger than he first thought. He shoots up quickly, nearly smacks his crown against the ceiling, but he keeps himself under control. The hands on his hips restrain him, as if he is a balloon at risk of becoming untethered and floating away. They pull just a little, keeping him steady.

The next four pull ups are fast and easily conquered. When he finishes, Stiles drops to the floor. He can’t help smiling arrogantly. ‘There,’ he challenges. ‘Easy.’

‘Good. Now do five more.’

Stiles slouches and scowls. He remembers why he hates Alpha Derek so much. ‘No.’

Derek comes up close, imposing, huge, intimidatingly naked. He leans in and whispers in a filthy voice that Stiles has never heard before.

‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

_Sir yes sir!_

When he begins again, the hands on his hips slip slightly, move closer back, press more confidently. They are feeling his shape, trying to disguise this by gently supporting his weight. The thumbs stroke up and down, distracting Stiles as he tries to move, and he is even more conscious of the stirring in his pants; the heat, the feeling in his gut. A different kind of hunger that is interrupting all other thoughts.

When he reaches the third pull up, it is as if his arms have transformed into spaghetti. The strength in them suddenly leaves and he is heaving, turning red-faced, until he confronts the reality that he cannot do any more. Whilst he hangs there limp, he hears tutting from behind. The hands move to his cheeks, feel through his pants unashamedly. ‘Let go,’ Derek says close behind him.

When Stiles is grounded, he feels Derek press up behind him. It makes the blood surface at his face. He can’t hide the imprint in his pants because now he’s as hard as rock. He can feel Derek too, though not as pronounced; he can feel him still soft, but bulging, and he feels big. Very big.

Those large hands draw over the edges of his thighs and rest against his hip bones. For a moment he thinks they will dive under his pants, under all clothing and sink down, but they don’t. Restrained, they rest there, firm yet gentle. Derek’s stubble scrapes against his cheek again, weighs upon Stiles’ shoulder.

‘Such a shame.’

There’s a thought in Stiles’ head. Perhaps it comes from _outside_, but he doesn’t care because he likes the idea too much.

He arches his spine away from Derek, and as he does, he moves his hips backwards, grinds them against that large bulge pressing against him. He moves hips a little to rub as teasingly as he can.

Derek audibly growls behind him.

‘I thought,’ Stiles groans, ‘it’s the trying that counts.’

He can’t see if Derek agrees, but he takes the growing pressure behind him as agreement enough. He tilts his head, inviting, and Derek’s lips descend on his neck no more than a second later. The movements of the alpha’s tongue on his skin, licking and drawing against his neck sends shudders through Stiles. He feels open, taken, completely conquered. Derek puts a leg between his and pushes outwards. He opens even more.

His breath hitches when he feels the teeth, and not simply human teeth, that are scraping and biting, tasting the flesh, making it wet and warm. There’s a sharpness to them that can only be linked to a werewolf. It fills him with adrenaline, his heart is pumping noisily, he feels it in his veins; he isn’t scared because he trusts his alpha. He will be open and remain open.

Derek’s hands finally descend, undercutting the fabrics, and they grip the inside of his thighs, reaching as far as they can, as if they are never grabbing enough, as if the thing they are truly searching for and trying to grasp is impossibly far away.

‘We should…’ Derek hesitates, but not because he is unsure, not because he is worried of what he might say. He hesitates because he enjoys the sensations too much, his place behind Stiles. Stiles can tell. 

‘…We should talk.’

Stiles lifts from him, untangles himself, separates. He turns around, looks at Derek, then he kisses him passionately on the lips. Derek reaches out and holds him everywhere.

They keep the silence, neither of them says anything for some time. It is a great opportunity to focus entirely on Derek’s breathing, on the subtle movements of his shape, the rise and fall of his chest. Eventually, Derek speaks in a quiet husky voice.

‘We’re very different, aren’t we?’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you think we’ll ever stop fighting?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then why? Why at all?’

Stiles doesn’t answer. He doesn’t like to name these things.

* * *

They click the door shut and Deaton quietly locks it. Scott knows Stiles and Kira are watching them with betrayed and baleful eyes.

‘What did you see?’ They haven’t seen Deaton in days, but the druid still doesn’t find the need for small talk.

‘It was reaching for Stiles, so I ran at it. When I leapt and I hit it, the thing turned to me and I saw a flashing image of where it was fleeing to. Somewhere dark and damp; water was dripping from the roof. Everything was either rocks or bones. But then the image closed on me, slammed shut, like a door. Except it wasn’t a door. It was the binding of a book. A physical book. Spirits like this, Deaton, they’re always anchored to something physical, which means if we find this book, we can find it.’ Then Derek seems distracted by a thought. ‘You know…we shouldn’t be here alone. Everyone else should be here, talking with us. We’re a pack. Especially Stiles, he deserves—’

‘No. There’s a reason it has to be just us.’ Deaton places both his hands down on the nearest surface, a rough wooden slab propped like an island in the middle of the room. Once, this place was perhaps another kitchen, but it is gutted and damp and no-one has felt the need to renovate it. ‘I think…I think we’re nearing something here.’

‘Good,’ Derek growls. Deaton counters him with a look that seems to say, ‘Is it?’

‘The thing is,’ Deaton rubs his temple, ‘is that we know where this book of yours is.’

Scott backs away a little, tries to shrink when he sees the look of confusion and surprise on his alpha’s face. _When he realises we’ve known about this book the whole time…_

‘I don’t understand, I haven’t even described what it looks like.’

‘You don’t need to. We have the book. I have it stored in my property in a circle of mountain ash. I need you to keep quiet, Mr. Hale, or the others outside this room will hear you.’

Derek has turned crimson; his eyes are flashing red luminous. When he asks how they could have had this book the whole time, Scott thinks he can hear tooth scraping against tooth.

‘It’s not likely a coincidence, but until now there wasn’t a need to share this information.’

‘Wasn’t a need?’ 

‘I didn’t want to share this information with you until it was absolutely necessary,’ Deaton says calmly. ‘Otherwise we might have rushed into actions, like we did before. I couldn’t risk it, not with this object. I’ve studied it…I’ve looked into it…’ The druid rubs his eyes again with weariness. ‘It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but now I have information to share.’ He doesn’t wait for Derek to calm down, to unclench his fists upon the table. It’s probably best to keep to talking, to make progress; it’s the best way to distract Derek from an outburst.

‘The book appeared to Scott days before Stiles went missing. He was out in the forest and he sensed its presence because it gave off the scent of Allison. He brought the book to me and I took care of it, instructed him to forget about it.’ 

The doctor looks at him and for some reason, it is like a knife in his stomach.

‘Nevertheless, the damage was done. Stiles was taken. What happened after was…well, there’s no purpose in dwelling on it. But it made me cautious about what information we share, and what actions we choose to take. It also made me more determined to find answers. I promise you: there was nothing out there—of that you can be absolutely sure. I’ve spent more time looking into this than I care to admit, and in each and every path I found myself, a dead end came up. I’ve looked into Scandinavian folklores and Biblical histories; I’ve read the Talmud three times over. I know the druidic tradition like the back of my hand. I’ve read about the superstitions of kingdoms and empires from Lisbon to Beijing over ten centuries. There was absolutely nothing.’

The druid turns quiet, drops his hands from his face, leaves his eyes red and overworked after being rubbed too much. 

‘So I turned to this _book_. A black grimoire with inscriptions of incantations, with runes and illustrations and methods for raising the dead. This book which every time I read smelt of burning wood and made sounds…things I don’t want to repeat. I came to realise, quickly, that it wasn’t a book at all. It was a door, a window, an opening.’

‘A conduit?’ Scott suggests, but Deaton shakes his head. 

‘No. Most spirits have conduits—a physical form on which they anchor themselves and return to when they have lost their power. This book is not a conduit because it doesn’t _hold_ anything. It is only the breach to something else.’

‘We can pass through it?’ Derek is tapping a finger against the wooden slab.

‘It’s going to be difficult. We’re stabbing in the dark with a wooden knife, stabbing into blackness where there is something potentially too powerful for us to overcome.’

‘It _showed_ me where it is skulking and hiding. It _showed_ me. I know we can destroy it.’ Scott watches his alpha growl; his teeth are white within his mouth.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ cuts Deaton. ‘This thing plays games. It wants you to know where it is, it wants you to follow.’

‘Maybe,’ Scott pipes up, ‘if we knew about what it was? Where it came from? It’s strengths and weaknesses?’

Deaton wrings his hands and brings them to his face. He rubs his eyes relentlessly as if they grit in them. He hasn’t been sleeping either, though whether it’s because he spends his hours reading or tossing in a nightmare, Scott doesn’t know.

‘I suppose I was sifting through the wrong books.’ A vacant, emotionless look has glazed his eyes. ‘I did try, I read it, as much as I could stomach. It might have sent me mad, I think.’ 

On his chest rests his horned pendant, inanimate and cold. 

‘I don’t think…I don’t think it merely takes the form of a child. I think it _is_ a child, though obviously not human. I found a marking, on the page I opened. I didn’t look for it; it was just where the pages parted, as if by themselves. The marking was three bold dots in an upright triangle, exactly like a therefore sign used in logic arguments. The next page had nothing on it, so I turned again. The symbol was repeated, but this time each dot was a symbol of its own. The two bottom symbols were an orb and a bone, the topmost was an apple.’

‘Did this mean anything to you?’

‘To me, it meant what this demon considers itself to be. I think it was trying to impress and intimidate me by boasting of where it has come from, what its heritage is.’

Scott realises his face has become lined. He doesn’t understand something, he has missed the meaning like a train, and by the look of Derek’s expression, he’s not the only one.

‘Neither of you understand what I’m saying. Very well, but I need to make a distinction before I explain. This _thing_ is telling us something, it could be what it considers itself to be, or it could be a complete deception; we don’t know if it is lying, if it is over-confident, or simply boasting. We don’t know which came first: this _thing_ or the story it claims to be part of.’

Derek’s face is hard and his voice stern. ‘I don’t understand.’ 

Deaton sighs.

‘Three dots, in a pyramid; the two at the base are precursors, the topmost is the progeny. A trinity, unholy. The orb is the world, earth, _adamah_, and the bone is a rib. The apple is the child, the first of pain and punishment.’

Scott still doesn’t understand, he’s missing something, and he nearly bursts with frustration, but Derek appears to have understood because he nods his head very slowly. ‘Well,’ he eventually mutters. ‘We best hope it’s lying.’

‘So you still intend to go to it and fight?’

‘Either that or roll over? Doing something is better than nothing. Twice it’s tried to kill Stiles, are we just going to hide when it tries a third time? I promised I’d send it back to hell, so that’s why I’m going alone.’

Deaton just laughs, but Scott nearly jumps. ‘You can’t be serious?’

‘I am. It’s my responsibility and it’s the only way I can protect everyone.’

‘You can’t protect the pack when you’re dead.’

‘I’m not going to die.’

_Stabbing in the dark, with a wooden knife._ ‘I’m coming with you.’

Deaton audibly groans.

‘You’re not.’

‘I am. I have to. I have to because…because this is all my fault. Because…I touched the book. It came to me, in the night. It tempted me and I touched it and that was the same night Stiles disappeared. It was all because of me. You know what it’s like, to shoulder that guilt. You know why I have to go for the same reasons you have to go: to correct the mistakes I’ve made, to take responsibility.’

‘Scott,’ Deaton puts a hand on his shoulder, ‘you know you can’t go; you know because of what we learned from Erica. We might as well send Stiles with you.’

‘No, it’s not the same, because Stile’s hasn’t done anything, didn’t mix himself up in things. He’s been broken to an inch of his life because of me. That’s the difference.’

‘I am the pack alpha,’ Derek says slowly, ‘and you’re keeping things from me. What are you talking about?’

The druid chews his lip. ‘We have kept secrets when necessary. Sometimes it is the best thing to do. This is the last secret, but now you need to know. Tell him, Scott.’

‘On the night Erica died, she made one call to Deaton. We didn’t tell you everything she said. We told you it was playing a game, that there will only be one winner and that if Stiles explains the rules, you die. You’ve guessed that other people are involved. Well you’re right. It is after someone else. Me.’

Deaton thumps the wooden slab with emphasis. ‘From that, we can read backwards. From what has been revealed to us in the nightmares that we’ve all been having, we can piece it together. It is going to kill only one person; either Stiles or Scott. They have to choose between them: who will be the one to die.’

Scott sees the fury in his alpha, the strained jaw, the burning eyes, all of it withers away. He softens, looking at Scott. He just murmurs, ‘Pup.’

‘Taking Scott with you could be fatal.’

‘No,’ Scott raises his voice, ‘it doesn’t have to be. I have a right to be there, I have a right to correct my mistakes. We’re going to fight.’ _And if the choice has to be made, if the game has to be played, so be it._

Once again, they find themselves in communal silence.

‘Please, Derek. Neither of you should be going, but to let Scott go would be madness. Please.’

Scott hasn’t seen Derek this way before. His alpha doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t torture himself over decisions, at least not obviously. He never stays silent this long at the cusp of a decision.

‘I’ve learned something recently, from Stiles. I realised that they’re not children, at least not all the time. I can’t hold him back, Alan. He’s not a cub anymore.’

Deaton drops his head, speaks weakly. ‘Well then, I suppose that’s it. I think I’m going to rest. I haven’t slept in days.’

* * *

Scott sees Derek by the door. He’s watched him walk up to it, about to knock on it and push it open, but he stops short. The door’s ajar, and he’s heard something on the other side. For a moment, it sends panic through him. He thinks, what if Stiles is gone, what if something has happened, something new and therefore terrible?

He calms down quickly, however, when he sees Derek not moving, but continuing to listen.

He creeps closer, making great effort not to be seen or sensed. Then he hears for himself what Derek is listening to, even though he’s at least ten feet further away.

‘…Ha ha, well there’s always things like that happening in town. Any good stories from your shifts? Uh-huh. Wow. Yeah, that’s gotta hurt…Yes dad, I’m alright. I miss you too. You haven’t ordered takeout, have you? You promised you wouldn’t…Oh well, I forgive you, even if your heart doesn’t…We should definitely do that, when we next see each other…I don’t know…I just…I don’t know…Yeah I love you too…Of course I miss you, but I’m only saying it once…Okay, see you soon…’

Derek drops his head—whatever drove him to Stiles’ room is no longer important. He backs away, leaves Stiles alone. Even with his werewolf senses, Scott can’t hear anything behind the door. The room is silent and dark.

* * *

‘Do you remember Ridley Groves?’ Lydia asks out of nowhere. There is a collective moan across the room, amongst each pack member trying to watch the movie.

‘Did that pop into your head because of Ridley Scott?’

‘Yes, perhaps it did. Still, do you remember him? He went out with Ellie Harrison a few years ago, remember? You used to get so mad, Scott, because you once asked her out and she said no.’

‘Thank you, Lydia, for that reminder. You know, it’s hard to take chestbursters seriously with you talking over them.’

Malia shushes him harshly.

‘Don’t _shush_ me! I wasn’t the one who started talking in the first place!’

‘Whatever happened to Ridley? I can’t remember,’ Lydia continues, straining with thought and holding a piece of popcorn between her fingers.

‘His family moved to San Francisco last year.’ Stiles steals the popcorn from her.

‘Ah. Why didn’t he say goodbye or anything?’

‘He did, you were just too popular to notice,’ Malia cuts in. ‘Now, can we please stop talking over Sigourney.’

‘What do you mean I was “too popular to notice”?’ 

No-one answers her. She strains in thought again, another piece of popcorn in hand. ‘Didn’t one of the teachers catch him kissing Drake Roberts the senior quarterback behind the old chemistry block?

Stiles stiffens a little, catches Scott looking at him.

‘Yes, though I heard it was more than kissing.’

‘Who knew.’

‘Me for one,’ Malia growls.

‘You weren’t even in school back then.’

‘Ridley was a jerk who couldn’t figure out what he wanted.’ Everyone turns and looks at Stiles. ‘What?’ He bites his lip. It may have been a long time ago, but he still hadn’t forgiven Ridley.

‘Wow Stiles, that’s not a very progressive thing to say.’ He can sense the disapproval in Lydia’s tone.

‘Yeah check yourself,’ Scott adds, smirking.

‘Maybe he figured he wanted both.’ Stiles catches Derek’s glowing eyes. He understands they’re having a different conversation altogether, one that the rest of the room are not part of.

‘Never thought I’d say it, but you should listen to Derek, Stiles. Now, with that little detour out of the way, can we please watch the movie?’ 

No-one tests Malia’s patience.

* * *

‘So, you like both? Is that what you made a point of saying?’

‘I like you. I know I want you.’

‘Derek, I didn’t mean for you to think I was saying anything personal—I used to like Ridley. That’s why he’s a jerk.’

‘Oh.’

‘So…you like me? You know you want me?’ He pulls a mischievous face and Derek can’t help grinning back, putting his hands upon Stiles’ hips, pulling his body against him. ‘Of course, but I’m only saying it once.’

They’re in an upstairs hallway, dangerously reckless, but a long way from where the movie is still playing. There’s a thrill in being so reckless, in just not giving a fuck. It’s a kind of feeling he’s recently found addictive. There’s only so much you can care and worry. The _outside_ thoughts agree.

Stiles presses his cheek against Derek’s, feels the stubble. He whispers in the alpha’s ear, ‘I want to try something…’ At his words, he feels something stir against him. He raises his eyebrow. ‘Seems you want to try something too?’ Derek makes a deep noise that Stiles interprets as a, ‘yes, fuck yes.’

He can’t help snorting, leaning over Derek’s shoulder. It’s like a moment in the blooper reel of a movie—in one moment they’re deadly serious, in the next he’s trying not to laugh on Derek’s shoulder.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just strange, trying to be sexy, you know? I don’t want to give the impression I have any idea what I’m doing.’

‘Just go with your instincts. You’re already sexy.’

So he does.

His instincts, or the _outside_ thoughts, they are one and the same. They bring him to his knees and pulling at the strap of Derek’s belt. The alpha falls back against the hallway wall. He lets Stiles do the rest. 

It takes too long; Stiles loses his patience a little, but eventually he unfastens the leather, pulls down the zip. He looks blankly the huge bulge and dark spot in Derek’s underwear. He thinks about whether this is really happening, whether he is really about to do this.

He puts his palms under Derek’s shirt and reaches across his body, reminding himself of the feel of his skin, his hair, the solidness of his body. He feels Derek’s movements, his heavy breaths. When he looks up, he sees Derek gazing at him in a stupor.

He brings his palms down, pulls at the underwear.

He still wasn’t expecting it to be as big as it was, even when he could see its shape below the fabric. The tip is already glistening. The smell of musk makes him salivate. He brings his tongue out, licks away the bead at the tip of the head and tastes the saltiness, hears Derek groan, feels him shudder under his fingers.

After that, Stiles is possessed. 

He didn’t realise he could be so dirty and love it so much. He lets Derek’s cock rest across his face, the shaft lean against the bridge of his nose as he licks from the base all the way up. When he reaches the head again, he takes a deep breath, reminds himself to breathe through his nose and swallows the dick as far as he can without gagging.

‘Fuck.’

He keeps his teeth out of the way and curls his tongue over every inch of Derek. He licks and sucks on every morsel. He surprises himself when he reaches nearly halfway, but he stops going any further. He doesn’t even want to risk it.

Derek tastes…good, he thinks. It is his only thought now. Derek tastes _good_.

He brings his hand to hold the base of Derek’s cock, moves it forwards and backwards, partly to stop him swallowing too much. Then he moves his mouth in and out, slurping, licking, swallowing it down again. He makes a lot of wet noises, but he can’t make more noise than Derek. He hears him groan and grunt, and he widens his legs so that Stiles can get as close as possible to the base of his groin.

‘Fuck, Stiles.’

Every now and then, he pulls off completely, breathes, looks at how wet he’s made Derek with his own saliva, then he resumes again, as energetic as before. He feels Derek draw his fingers over the back of his head, gently rubbing into his hair. He can tell the alpha is resisting the urge to push his head down.

He times it exactly right. He’s mid-way through swallowing Derek down again when he looks up and sees his alpha looking back at him. The image of Stiles swallowing him down was too much for Derek, apparently.

‘Fuck—’ He grunts, and Stiles feels warmth erupt in his mouth.

He holds back a cough, overcomes every instinct and just swallows and keeps swallowing as much as he can. He tastes the salt, the unique musk, but he can’t keep it up forever, so he pulls it out of his mouth and lets Derek continue to pump cum across his face. It arrives in ropes from chin to forehead. He’s gulped down the rest.

‘Fuck, Stiles—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Ah fuck.’ He’s turned a bright shade of red. If only Stiles could believe he’s sorry.

‘You know, this means you have to clean me up.’

‘Here,’ is all he says as he helps Stiles off his feet. His dick is still semi-hard between them, poking out from the gap in his trousers. He brings his index finger across Stiles’ face and collects his cum, like snow in front of a snowplough. He brings it to Stiles’ mouth and pushes in finger in. Stiles licks his finger clean.

‘Taste good?’

‘Too much salt.’ 

Derek grins. Collects his cum again with his finger. Stiles lets his mouth hang open, but at the last moment, the alpha brings his finger off and puts it in his own mouth, tasting.

‘Mmmmm. Tastes fine to me.’

This time, it’s Stiles’ turn to shudder.

With the rest, he rubs it gently into Stiles’ skin until it disappears. ‘There,’ he growls, ‘now you have my scent.’

‘Are you…are you marking me?’

Derek answers him with his lips. ‘Come on,’ he puts his dick back into his pants and fastens his belt. ‘There’s still half a movie to see.’

‘Wait—won’t they notice?’

‘If they do, they aren’t likely to guess.’

‘Scott will definitely guess.’

‘Good,’ Derek gives him a gentle shove towards the stairs. ‘Then let him.’


End file.
